Numb
by Deranged Black Kitten
Summary: A sudden death that Gwen and Kevin refuse to accept, and a dark ritual to bring the wielder of the omnitrix back. What could possibly go wrong? "Ben, are you okay? Can you hear us?" Bevin fic. Warnings for blood.
1. Chapter 1

_Greetings all Ben 10 fans! I cross-posted this on livejournal and decided to post it here too. Although it's in no way a crossover, I was inspired to write this after watching Practical Magic, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Ben 10:AF all in one go. This story takes place about a year after Ultimate Alien, so Ben and Gwen are 17 and Kevin is 18. Also, all the hype about Ben from Ultimate Alien has died down, but the characters aren't completely free of the media. That really won't go into affect for another few chapters though. _

_Also, a warning to you all, this is Bevin, meaning it's slash. It's nothing hardcore though, I couldn't write that stuff to save my life. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Ben 10 series. Don't sue me, I'm poor. _

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**Chapter One**

"Shit. _Shit,_" Kevin swore under his breath, his grip on the steering wheel tightening as they sped down the road; going fast but not fast enough to become an immediate target on any nearby cop's radar. The last thing they wanted was to be pulled over, not when the backseat was all bloody. How they would even explain that... How they would explain Ben...

'_Hope I can get the stains out after this,_' he thought hollowly, because thinking such a normal, 'Kevin-like', thought almost made it seem like everything would work out in the end, as if, by the end of the night, everything _would_ be back to normal and the only thing he actually did have to worry about was the upholstery in the backseat of his car.

"For fuck's sake, stop crying!" Kevin snapped, noticing for the first time just how much he swore in extremely stressful situations. "We'll fix this," he said, not sure who he was trying to convince more, Gwen or himself.

When the hero dies in a movie, it's always... Epic, for lack of a better term. There's some long, grand speech or at least a statement of some sort that sums up just how badass that hero is in a few short words. In many cases, there's an explosion, something bright and flashy that usually takes the villain out at the same time, be it some sentient enemy or a meteor hurtling towards the Earth. In almost every example of a hero's death, it's a sacrifice for the greater good, something that will save a bunch of useless civilian lives, and for some reason there's a lot of slow motion involved, as if time itself slows down to witness the hero's tragic, but noble death.

Kevin should have known better than to take anything American cinema has to say at face-value, but still, he hadn't expected it to be so quick, so... pointless.

It had started out as any normal fight (well, normal for them), with just him, Ben and Gwen faced off against a couple of rogue aliens in the usual abandoned warehouse setting. Kevin still couldn't quite recall what species of alien it was. At the time of the fight, he had been too busy fending off their attacks to care, and right now he was a little too preoccupied with cleaning up the mess left over to pay it much thought. It was a species he hadn't dealt with much, most likely only having seen them once or twice in passing without actually interacting with them until now. Koven-something. The only important thing to make note of with the species is their extendable needle- like fingers. Such an attack put up against Gwen's mana shields, Ben's aliens, and Kevin's ability to coat his body with steel (or any other strong material that was nearby) didn't make for much of a threat, so there really wasn't too much to be concerned about.

But then the omnitrix ('_That stupid, fucking omnitrix._') timed out right in the middle of the fight. It had happened before, many times before, but for some reason the Koven-something aliens were quicker to react than any other alien in the past had reacted before when given a similar opportunity.

There hadn't been enough time for Gwen to put up one of her mana shields around Ben, there hadn't been enough time for Ben to give his usual words of protest whenever the omnitrix timed out, Ben barely even had enough time to frown when-

_Shink!_

Five needle-like fingers pierced straight through his body like butter. One through his right arm, one through his abdomen, two through his chest (Heart and right lung respectively), and one straight the center of his forehead. The whites of his eyes turned red, blood dripped out of his nose while even more blood dribbled out of slightly parted lips. There were no last words, no heartfelt goodbye, just one split second after the omnitrix timed out and he was gone.

The world around Kevin became muted, Gwen's heart-wrenched screams even sounded dull to his ears. He couldn't seem to tear his eyes away from Ben's form, the way it slid forward slightly on the alien's fingers, the way it crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut when the alien retracted its fingers, the way it.. his... _Ben's_ eyes, his reddening eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling above while even more red pooled on the ground around him. Red... so much red... on the ground... on Ben's clothes... on the alien's fingers...

The red consumed Kevin's vision, and for a while, it was all he could see, it was all he was aware of. When his mind finally came back to him and his vision returned, he was standing over Ben and Gwen, and the Koven-something aliens were in pieces around him, their blue alien blood somehow making the red covering Ben stand out even more. Gwen was kneeling by Ben's side, hunched over him with her long red hair (more orange than red compared to Ben's eyes, Ben's clothes...) fanned out over his still form. Her fingers were bunched up in his stained jacket, her shoulders shaking with sobs.

Kevin's breath caught in his throat before he managed to find his voice.

"Don't," he started out quietly, "don't you have something in your spell book for this?"

Her sobs was her only response. She was either so caught up in her grief that she didn't hear him, or she heard him, but she didn't have a solution and she couldn't find the strength to tell him so. Whichever one it was, her crying wasn't a good enough answer to him.

"_Gwen_" he said, more persistently this time. "Come on! Snap out of it! There's got to be something we can do!"

Sniffling and wiping at tears that refused to stop, Gwen said quietly, "Kevin.. I.."

"Don't tell me that out of all your spell books there isn't something that can fix this, something that can make this better," he said, his own voice growing shaky, feeling like a lump was slowly growing in his throat.

"I think there's some stuff in Charmcaster's old books," she finally admitted. "But... but Kevin, any sort of magic like that will be really dark and-"

"So? What could be worse than this?" he shouted, a tiny bit of hysteria he would never admit to having creeping into his voice. Gwen's eyes fell back down to her cousin and her crying began anew. "Damnit, stop crying!" he snapped for what would be the first, but certainly not the last time that night. "There's still something we can do, and your spell books hold the answers, okay?"

Finally, she nodded, and after once again wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked up at him and said, "I'll try whatever I can."

"Good," he said, not sounding as confident as he would have liked about the whole thing. "Now get up. I'll carry him to the car. We'll stop by your place first so you can run in and get the spell books and then we'll head over to my place and do this there."

Having recently moved out of his mom's house, Kevin lived in a small one-bedroom flat up above an old, rundown garage. Kevin frequently worked down at the garage and in exchange for his services, the garage's owner let him live in the flat above for little to no rent. At this time of night, Kevin's home was the only place they could go without having to worry about anyone walking in and seeing what they would be doing.

Gwen raced off to where they last parked the car and Kevin knelt down next to Ben's side. As his knees hit the ground, blood immediately seeped into the fabric of his jeans. Swallowing thickly, Kevin ran a hand down Ben's face and shut the younger boy's eyes. He had hoped that that would make the whole situation a little bit better, as if Ben was just sleeping or something, but the blood he accidentally smeared down Ben's face from the hole in his forehead seemed to ruin the effect.

Pushing aside his turbulent emotions, Kevin swept Ben up in his arms in one quick motion. It was then that he noticed the change in the accursed omnitrix. The face of it which was usually lit up in red or green was now a dull, dead grey. That coupled with the feeling of Ben's dead weight against his arms, blood seeping through Kevin's clothes, really drove home the reality of Ben's condition to the ex-con. Unable to stop a few tears from escaping his eyes, Kevin had never felt more like a kid than in that moment, because despite everything they had gone through and all that they had experienced, the fact of the matter was that they were still a bunch of kids, just barely young adults, and each one of those aliens they had faced throughout their lives were very real threats that could kill them, had _already_ killed one of them.

'_He's only seventeen... and I'm only a year older than him_' he thought. Blinking furiously, he forced any remaining tears back. There was no reason to be crying, not yet, not when there was still something to be done. Shaking his head, Kevin rose to his feet and took off out of the warehouse to where he parked the car. After carefully laying Ben down in the backseat, he hopped into the driver's side and took off back to Bellwood.

With each mile they traveled, Kevin could feel his agitation and anxiety over the whole thing growing to the point where he found himself muttering swears under his breath. Gwen's random bouts of crying sure as hell wasn't helping and neither was the scent of blood that permeated the car despite the fact that he had rolled down the windows five minutes into the drive. Gwen thankfully managed to gather enough composer to keep from crying long enough for her to be able to sneak in through her bedroom window to grab her spell books as well as a change of clothes and return to the car without her parents noticing.

Pulling into the garage, Kevin shut the large garage door behind him to hide their activities from the prying eyes of neighbors and passer-bys, all the while feeling grateful that it was late enough for his boss and landlord to have gone home long before. Scooping Ben back up into his arms, Kevin held back a cringe at how cold the younger boy had grown since the warehouse, and carried him up to his small flat with Gwen following behind. They laid him out on the kitchen floor, figuring it would be the easiest place to clean the blood up from later on.

Piling her spell books up on the kitchen table, Gwen took a seat next to them with her back to her cousin (not seeing him somehow made it easier on her. Whether Kevin could see Ben or not, the image seemed to have permanently burned itself into his head). Grabbing the nearest book, Gwen quickly became absorbed in its words, searching for a magical solution of some sort, and Kevin found himself at a loss of what to do. Magic wasn't his thing, so it wasn't like he could help her search, and now that he thought of it, he probably wouldn't be able to help out with the spell itself either. The next few steps would be all up to Gwen.

With not a lot left that he could do, Kevin found himself back down in the garage cleaning the blood out of the backseat of his car. If they wanted to avoid anyone asking any tough questions, the least he could do was make the car presentable for public eyes. His mind must have fallen into a daze because before he knew it, the backseat was clean and Gwen was knocking on the car window to get his attention. His gaze drifted over the bucket of red water and the stained rags scattered around it. As he listened to Gwen's brief explanation of the spell she found, he vaguely noted that he'd have to dispose of his stained cleaning supplies properly so that his boss wouldn't find out. When he finally looked up at Gwen, he was surprised to see that she had stopped crying. Her eyes were red and puffy ('_Not as red as Ben's_'), but they were dry. She looked as tired as he felt, too tired to cry anymore.

Following Gwen back up to his flat, Kevin's eyes widened at the sight of his kitchen. While he was busy cleaning out the car, Gwen had set up all the necessary variables for the spell. Painted across the floor was a series of symbols all perfectly woven together to form a circle and in the center of the circle was Ben.

"Is that... chocolate sauce?" was the first thing Kevin asked, eyeing the substance that the symbols were painted in.

"I didn't want to use a marker and, well, it was the best thing I could find," Gwen said tiredly, "My mana will power the spell, but it's going to take both of our energy to get it to work. Consider our energy being the shock of a defibrillator."

"Okay," Kevin said. "What do I do?"

"I'm going to need to draw this mark on your hand," she said, holding up her own hand to show a simple, swirling-type of symbol. "And then..." she hesitated for a moment before grabbing something off of the kitchen table. "Then, using the hand with symbol on it, we're going to have to stab him in the heart... these should work."

Held in her hand were two skewers one might _normally_ use for shish kabobs.

"What?!"

"I told you any spell for this sort of thing would be dark," she snapped irritably. "This was the least dark one I could find."

"I can't stab Ben in the heart!" Kevin said.

It was a pretty ridiculous statement to be making considering that Ben was already dead. Still though...

"It's this or nothing," Gwen said. "Every other spell calls for a sacrifice."

'_What sort of sacrifice?_' Kevin almost found himself asking.

Growling in frustration, Kevin threw his arms in the air and shouted, "Fine! Alright? I'll do it. Never going to be able to look at a kabob the same way again and those skewers are going straight into the trash after this, but I'll do it."

He offered his hand forward and it took but a second to draw the symbol on it. Taking one of the proffered skewers with a cringe, Kevin took a seat on the floor across from Gwen just outside the circle of symbols.

"I'll tell you when to, uh, stab," Gwen said awkwardly before her eyes glowed pink as she began the spell.

The pink soon radiated from the rest of her body and as she began chanting the foreign words of the spell, the pink seeped down into the chocolate sauce symbols until they too glowed. It was all very... bright.

"Hold you hand out over the circle," Gwen quickly instructed, hold her own hand that had the symbol drawn on it out over the circle, skewer held tightly in its grip. Kevin's heart thundered in his chest, but he followed her example, and as soon as he did, the symbols on both of their hands began to glow. The pink from the symbols on the floor seeped into Ben like he was a sponge, somehow leaving nothing of the chocolate sauce behind.

"Now!" Gwen shouted, and though Kevin's stomach was in knots and his heart was in his throat, his hand somehow managed to sail down towards Ben at the same time that Gwen's did. With a sickening thud, both skewers struck Ben in the chest; morbidly enough, the entire task was made easier by the previous hole Ben's murderer had made.

The skewer burned hot in Kevin's hand before dissolving completely and with a blast of light which quickly turned to a dark red glow, Gwen and Kevin were thrown away from Ben by some unseen force. Hitting one of the kitchen cabinets hard, Kevin felt that same draining feeling he once felt when Morningstar fed on his energy a few years back. Squinting through the light, he could do nothing but watch as Ben arched up off the ground, his body going tense as the red light pulsed around him. There was one final blast of light, white with a green tinge this time, before Ben flopped to the ground and all went still and dark.

Blinking the spots from his eyes, Kevin slowly and cautiously shuffled towards Ben, Gwen following in suit. Kevin really didn't know what to expect from the spell, neither of them did, but at the sight of Ben's chest rising and falling with breath, along with the fact that his fatal wounds had completely disappeared, Kevin felt that things were ten times better than they were five minutes ago.

"Ben?" Kevin called cautiously, hands hovering near the younger boy.

Green eyes shot open. They were still bloodshot, but they were a hell of a lot better than the deep red they had been before. They waited for a moment for Ben to speak, but when no response came, Kevin tried again.

"Ben, are you okay?" Kevin asked, this time resting his hand on the younger boy's shoulder.

Ben didn't respond, neither to the touch nor to Kevin's voice. Instead, his eyes drifted over to his left arm which lay limply at his side. Kevin could only guess that he was looking at the omnitrix whose face now glowed red. Ben flexed the fingers of his left hand a few times, his face completely expressionless as he did nothing else but stare.

"Ben," Gwen tried this time, concern leaking through her voice. "Can you hear us?"

Kevin bit his lip as a hundred different thoughts raced through his head about what could have gone wrong, what negative repercussions the spell could have had, what-

"Yes," Ben finally answered, not a single inflection of emotion in his tone.

"Are you okay?" Kevin repeated.

"I suppose," Ben said monotonously after a moment's pause.

"You suppose? What is that supposed to mean?" Gwen asked.

"I was just dead, right? Or am I not remembering correctly?" he asked bluntly.

"Um, yeah," Gwen said hesitantly. "You were kinda dead."

"There's no 'kinda' about it," Kevin said. "You were dead as a doornail, Benji. Now explain what you meant before. Are you alright or not?"

"I'm just saying that I suppose for someone who was just dead, I'm doing quite well," Ben explained, his fingers curling into a fist before his eyes drifted up to stare at Gwen and Kevin before traveling back down, this time to look at the hand Kevin still had on his shoulder. "Although for someone who can't currently feel anything physically or emotionally, I'm sure there are some who might argue that I'm not what one would call 'okay'."

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_End of chapter one. I'll post the next chapter soon. Review please and tell me what you think!_


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you everyone for your wonderful reviews! Here's chapter 2. Enjoy!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10, don't sue me. _

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**Chapter 2**

Not being able to feel anything was... _strange_, Ben decided, and he supposed that not having any emotions either was actually a good thing because otherwise he'd currently be freaking out, and not just because of the whole not-feeling thing. Dying was traumatic, especially dying in such a gruesome way. Ben couldn't remember anything past dying, which was probably for the best, but for three excruciating seconds, he had five foreign objects speared straight through his body. So yes, the emotionless thing was the silver-lining in this all. Considering how much Gwen and Kevin were freaking out, any emotions Ben could add to the situation would not be helpful.

His emotionless state aside, Ben losing his sense of touch, well, saying that it was 'strange' didn't quite describe how disconnected he felt to the world around him. Even when floating in space, he could feel the shifting of his muscles, but here and now, there was nothing, not even a sense of hot or cold. He knew he should be concerned. One's sense of touch kept them from hurting themselves and he no longer had that sort of safety net. Despite the severity of the matter though, he couldn't stop himself from pushing it aside as something he had no control over, therefore making it something he shouldn't bother himself with thinking about. Apparently losing his emotions meant losing any concern he would normally have for his own safety.

'_It's not important,_' he thought to himself as he watched Kevin and Gwen argue with each other. '_This deserves my attention more._'

And by 'this,' he didn't mean Kevin and Gwen arguing. No, he was referring to a not-so-minor detail he had yet to tell the two other teens standing across the room from him, and that detail came in the form of colorful lights that radiated off of both Kevin and Gwen. The light would pulse brighter every so often, and it kept fluctuating between different colors so frequently that Ben had trouble keeping up. It was the first thing he noticed when his eyes shot open to the sight of his friends crouched over him, and when his gaze drifted over and down to his arm, the second thing he noticed was that there was no light of any sort coming off of himself. He noticed his inability to feel anything a second later.

There were two reasons for not saying anything about the light; the first being that Kevin and Gwen already had enough on their plate to deal with concerning his condition and at the moment, they didn't need to be burdened more. The second reason why was because he honestly had no idea what it was himself. It didn't seem to be hurting anybody though, and as long as that was the case, he saw no reason why he couldn't keep this bit of information to himself until he had a better idea as to what it was he was dealing with.

"How can you not be concerned about this? He needs to see a doctor!" Gwen snapped, her patience wearing thin with her and Kevin's argument about whether or not Ben should go to the hospital. Her lights flared and mixed between red, purple, blue, white and black (Ben wasn't aware that light could be black until now. Even black lights looked more blue or purple than anything).

"I'm concerned!" Kevin countered defensively, his colors similar to Gwen's. "But if we take him to the hospital, they'll call his parents, and we need to keep this whole thing quiet for as long as possible. Besides, he's fine." Kevin's gaze met Ben's blank stare before he turned back to Gwen. "Well, maybe not fine, but still, there's not a scratch on him. Looks like the spell healed him just fine."

'_Spell?_' Ben mentally echoed before he caught sight of the spell books on Kevin's kitchen table. '_Ah, well that explains one thing._'

"We can't know that for sure," Gwen said. "Clearly something went wrong with the spell. For all we know he could be bleeding internally!"

'_So what do I know about the lights so far?_' Ben asked himself, completely unconcerned with any potential internal bleeding. As the once vibrant colors surrounding Kevin and Gwen grew pale while a sickly yellow color bled into the rest, he murmured out loud, "Strange."

"Well, we still can't take him to a hospital," Kevin said, apparently not hearing Ben. "If his parents find out, than your grandfather will find out and I'm pretty sure he'll be able to connect the dots as to what we did."

"What we did is we saved Ben," Gwen said, her colors growing vibrant once again.

"Like you said, Gwen," Kevin said, colors back to being vibrant as well, but more blue in color than anything. "It was a dark spell."

'_Why do they have lights and I don't?_' Ben wondered. '_Is it something to do with dying? Maybe I do have lights, but I just can't see my own. Hmm, maybe it has something to do with the soul? Although that's assuming that souls are real. I'd rather go with a more solid idea than a speculated guess._'

Blues and purples, shifting to reds, all with hints of black.

'_It keeps changing a lot. I'm sure that has something to with it... Maybe thinking simply is the way to go on this. What do they have that I don't?_'

Brows furrowed, eyes narrowed, hands curled into fists.

Anger, frustration, sorrow and fear.

'_Emotions, obviously,_' he thought. '_That and their sense of touch, but emotions makes more sense. I'll stick with that for now. I'll need to do some experimenting at some point to be sure though._'

"Hey Kevin," Ben spoke out loud this time, interrupting the on-going argument. "Don't you have some sort of medical contact you used to see with bad wounds back when you were still a weapons dealer?"

There was a moment of dumbfounded silence before Kevin smacked his forehead in exasperation and said, "Duh! Why didn't I think of that?"

"You both have an emotional investment in this," Ben stated. "Currently, I don't. At the moment, I can think more logically about this than you two."

"You know something's wrong when Ben's the most logical one out of the three of us," Kevin muttered.

"I suppose I should be insulted but you're right," Ben said.

"Okay, I'll call up my guy and let him know we're coming, but before we go anywhere, we need to clean up. We can't exactly go walking around like this," Kevin said, gesturing at their bloody clothes.

It was decided that Gwen would take the first shower, leaving just Kevin and Ben standing in the kitchen. Once Kevin made the call to his medical contact, his eyes fell back to his kitchen and he sighed, his lights coming in shades of purple and blue.

"I'll clean your kitchen if you want," Ben said.

It sounded like the right thing to say. His blood, his mess, after all. However, Kevin didn't seem to think so, for as he looked over at Ben, his colors shifted to pale blues with small hints of faded yellows and he said, "No, it's fine, just sit down before you hurt yourself." he paused as his gaze traveled up and down Ben, taking in all the red on his clothes. "I'll... I'll get you a change of clothes."

As Kevin disappeared down a hallway, Ben turned his attention to his clothes. He tugged at one of the holes in his t-shirt, pulling the fabric away from his chest and listening to the wet sound it made as it clung to his skin. He didn't know much about cleaning clothes (he could barely even remember what setting to put the washer on back at home), so he really didn't know whether his clothes were salvageable or not. They were almost completely saturated with blood, but it was still fresh so he was sure that the odds were in his favor. If he ever did get his emotions back though (_if_, not _when._ Realistically there was the possibility that this would never get fixed), there was a chance that he may not want the clothes because they were too much of a reminder of dying. On the other hand, he did have an attachment of some sort to his green leather jacket before this all happened, and if he did get his emotions back, he may be angry with himself that he didn't even try to save it.

Which was why he was currently rinsing his jacket out under the sink faucet.

"What are you doing?" Kevin asked when he came back, setting some spare clothes down on a clean countertop.

"Attempting to clean my jacket," Ben said dully. "Doesn't seem to be working. I'll most likely end up getting a new one."

"That'd probably be best," Kevin said, lips pulled down into a frown at the sight of the sodden, rust-colored leather.

While Ben worked on cleaning his jacket, Kevin began the task of cleaning up his kitchen. There were some smears of sticky brown residue that looks distinctly like chocolate syrup, and there were also smears and puddles of blood that needed to be wiped up. After several minutes of silent scrubbing between the two of them, Ben deemed his jacket hopeless and tossed it into the trash. He once again offered to help Kevin clean up the kitchen ("For the last time, no! I don't trust you with bleach right now."), before taking a seat at the kitchen table and staring at the only thing of interest in the room; namely Kevin and his colorful lights.

Blues and purples were the predominant colors, but it would occasionally fluctuate to red and black and one time even red and pink.

"What?" Kevin's voice broke Ben out of his observation, his lights a shade of purple and red.

Unfazed from being caught staring, Ben simply asked, "What are you thinking about?"

Kevin blinked either from surprise or confusion at the question, and for a brief second his lights flared red and pink before shades of blue swallowed them up.

"Nothing," Kevin finally said. "Just that you need to stop staring at people like that."

"Like what?" Ben asked.

"Like, like," Kevin fumbled for a description. "With your eyes so..."

Deep dark blue colors.

"I dunno," he finally said, tossing a bloody rag across the room and into the trashcan. "Like a zombie? Like there's nothing there."

Purples and reds to reds with a tinge of black and then back to blue.

"Sorry," Ben said insincerely.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Kevin muttered.

It was then that Gwen re-entered the kitchen, her hair damp and her clothes clean. She looked between the two boys curiously before asking, "Who's going next?"

"Ben is," Kevin said immediately, continuing to scrub at the kitchen tiles even though there wasn't a trace of blood left on them. "Go on Ben."

Ben shot Kevin another blank look before grabbing the spare clothes off of the kitchen counter and heading down the hall to the bathroom.

Her hands glowing pink, Gwen ran her fingers through her hair, drying it almost instantly.

"Neat trick," Kevin said as he tossed the last of the bloody rags in the trashcan before putting the cleaning supplies away.

"Something I learned how to do when I was in a hurry one morning," Gwen said quietly as she picked up one of her spell books and took a seat at the kitchen table. She skimmed through its pages, wondering if it was too much to hope for that she would find a solution or at least an explanation as to what went wrong with the spell. Kevin's restless shuffling around the kitchen was making it a bit hard to concentrate though. Setting her book down with a mental sigh, Gwen looked up at Kevin and prodded cautiously, "So... how are you holding up about this whole thing?"

"I'm fine," Kevin responded irritably, sounding anything but.

She rubbed at eyes that itched from crying too many tears and blinked rapidly before saying, "Back at the warehouse... I don't think I've ever seen you that angry.."

'_It was frightening,_' she thought to herself, but wouldn't say it out loud.

"Yeah, well, they _killed_ Ben," Kevin said, some of his previous anger leaking through his voice. "How do you expect me to react?"

"You're right," she agreed quietly. "I'm just saying, with the way Ben is right now..." she trailed off, waiting until she heard the shower turn on down the hall. "Kevin, you've liked my cousin for a while now and... I just want to make sure you're going to be okay."

"Thanks for your concern, but I'll be fine," Kevin hissed, subconsciously crossing his arms over his chest in a defensive way. "So I missed my chance. Whatever. I'll get over it."

"You didn't 'miss your chance'," she said, her lips pursed stubbornly. "There'll be another chance. We'll fix this too, Kevin."

"Yeah, okay," Kevin muttered dourly while thinking, '_Because we fixed the last problem_ so well.'

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Pealing off his tacky clothes and dropping them into the sink, Ben twisted the bathtub faucet over to the red 'H' marker and stepped under the spray. He scrubbed at his skin blindly, noting how difficult it was to clean his back when he couldn't even tell if he was touching his back. The same went for his hair and any other part of his body that he couldn't actually see. Soap dripped into his eyes, obscuring his vision on more than one occasion, but he didn't pay it much mind since he couldn't feel the pain it would have normally caused him.

He had to use the water running down the drain as a way of measuring how clean he was. He watched as it ran red across the off-white bathtub, then pink, and when the water was finally coming off of him clear, he turned the faucet off and stepped out of the tub to check how well he did in the mirror over the sink. Wiping the steam clear from the mirror, Ben paused. He stared at his reflection with dead eyes that were red from soap. He was sure that if he had his emotions, his eyes would have instead widened in surprise.

"Oh."

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When he emerged from the bathroom dressed in Kevin's clothes that were a tad bit too large for him, his own ruined clothes in hand, Kevin and Gwen had the immediate appropriate response to his appearance.

"Jeez, Ben, what did you do?" Kevin asked, standing up from his seat at the kitchen table and walking over to Ben in a few quick strides.

"I got soap in my eyes," Ben stated in what was becoming his usual monotonous tone. "And I guess I turned the water on too hot."

"I'll say," Kevin agreed.

Standing in the living room connected to the kitchen, Ben watched as Kevin tentatively reached out and prodded at his face and neck. He could tell without having to feel it that Kevin's touch was light and gentle and he really didn't see the point in the other boy being so careful. It wasn't like he could feel the burns or the pain that would normally come from one touching the burns. Ben supposed that it was just an automatic response. As Kevin's hands disappeared out of his line of sight, Ben made note of the changing colors surrounding both Kevin and Gwen.

Pale bluish-purple with pale yellow hues.

Swearing quietly, Kevin said, "You burned your back, your arms and your shoulders pretty bad too." he sighed. "Let's hope this has faded a little bit by the time we drop you off at home."

"Should we get him some burn cream?" Gwen asked.

"Let's have him see the doctor first," Kevin decided as he straightened back up and gestured toward the kitchen table. "Go sit down before you hurt yourself _again._" walking past Ben and down the hall for his turn with the shower, Kevin muttered to himself, "Have a feeling I'm going to be saying that _a lot._"

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"Aside from what looks like a _really_ bad sunburn and irritated eyes, I can't find anything wrong with him," Kevin's medical contact, better known as Chuck, concluded. The man looked human in appearance, but was apparently known for wearing different types of ID masks. Not even Kevin knew what species of alien he was, or if he was even an alien at all. That fact never really mattered to Kevin though because the man was unbiased and he did his job well.

"No internal bleeding? No hidden injuries of any sort?" Gwen asked.

"Nope, he's fine," Chuck assured her as he packed his supplies away, much of it medical alien tech that could do the sort of scans a hospital from earth would normally need an entire room for.

There being nothing physically wrong with Ben meant that his current condition was magical in nature. In a way, that was better in Gwen's mind. She could fix a magical problem better than a medical one. Yet at the same time she was worried by this confirmation. Magic was tricky. What if she couldn't figure out a way to fix this?

"Thanks for this, Chuck," Kevin said, slipping something into the doctor's hand that Gwen pretended not to see and that Ben saw, but didn't care either way what it was.

Piling back into the car with Gwen sitting in the front with Kevin and Ben sitting in the back (being the only one who didn't mind sitting back there so soon after all that happened), the three left their rendezvous point with the doctor. As Kevin and Gwen sat in silence in the front seat, Ben watched the colorful lights around them from the back. He could still see the lights quite clearly in the darkness of the night, but the lights didn't actually reflect off the surfaces around them like a light source normally would.

"Call us if you have any other problems," Gwen said, breaking Ben out of his musings and notifying him of the fact that they were parked in front of his house.

"Here," Kevin said, handing over a tube of burn cream the doctor had given them before they left. "It's a lot better than anything you'll get over the counter. Also, I'd recommend cold showers from now on."

Taking the burn cream, Ben responded dully, "Thanks. I'll see you guys later."

Hopping out of the car and closing the door behind him, Ben headed up the walk to his front door where he was sure his parents were bound to be waiting nearby, angry that he didn't call them to tell them that he was going to be extra late that night. It really couldn't be helped though. If Kevin or Gwen had called them, they would want to know why Ben wasn't the one talking to them, and if Ben had talked to them over the phone, his dull tone of voice would have set off alarm bells in their heads and make them worry even more.

Standing before his front door with his hand on the door knob, he quietly spoke the words '_Hey Mom and Dad_' to himself a few times, trying to work out a tone of voice that sounded normal for him. Try as he might though, he couldn't seem to get a pitch that sounded like anything other than strained monotony, and he honestly didn't care what conclusion his parents reached either way.

Twisting the doorknob, he stepped inside.

"Benjamin Kirby Tennyson, where have you been?" like a bird of prey, his mother immediately swooped down, his father following close behind. Their lights were similar in color. Reds with black along with blue and purple hues.

"Hi Mom. Hi Dad," he said; bloodshot eyes dead, tone dull and flat.

His response gave them pause. Pink replaced the black. Blue and purple dominated over the red.

"Ben, honey, is something wrong?" his mother asked, concern bleeding through in her voice.

"No, everything's fine," he said unconvincingly. "Sorry I'm late. Got held up by some alien trouble."

"What happened to your clothes, son?" his father asked.

"They got slimed by the alien," Ben said. "Kevin let me borrow some of his. Got slime in my eyes too."

"Are you sure you're alright?" his mother asked. "You just seem... off."

"I'm fine," he said, walking past them. "I am tired though. Think I'm going to go to bed."

"Okay," he mother said, still sounding concerned. "Good night."

.

* * *

.

Kevin closed his front door behind him with a sigh. As his gaze traveled around his small, but quaint home, he wrinkled his nose in distaste. The scent of blood masked by disinfectant lingered in the air; it smelled like a hospital. Making a bee-line to the kitchen sink, he turned on the faucet to wash his hands. He had just finished dumping out the bucket of red water and the bloody rags left over from cleaning out the backseat of his car.

Shaking the water off of his hands before wiping them on his pants, Kevin caught sight of a stained green leather sleeve hanging out of the trashcan and froze. Ben's bloody, limp form with dead eyes staring up at the ceiling flashed across his mind. Gritting his teeth, he walked over to the trashcan and quickly tied the bag closed, trying not to let his eyes linger on Ben's ruined jacket and clothes or the bloody rags draped around them. He felt ridiculous for the few tears that escaped his eyes.

"Come on," he murmured angrily to himself. "Man-up. He's alive. We brought him back."

'_There's no reason to cry._'

There was blood under his fingernails.

"Damnit!" he hissed, walking back over to the sink and turning the faucet on hot.

More tears fell from his eyes as he washed his hands for what felt like the hundredth time that night.

'_Stop crying!_' he growled to himself.

"He's alive," Kevin repeated. "He's _fine!_"

'_But he's not really fine, is he?_'

_Gently prodding at burns Ben couldn't even feel himself getting, Kevin could feel the younger boy's pulse thudding through his neck, but even though he could feel Ben's heart beating, solid proof that he was alive, those dead eyes continued to stare at him._

Shutting off the sink faucet and drying his hands on his pants once again, Kevin wiped the remaining tears from his eyes and trudged down the hall to his bedroom.

_"So I missed my chance."_ he had said to Gwen. _"Whatever. I'll get over it._"

"Yeah _right_," he grumbled as he collapsed face-down on his mattress. "This is so messed up."

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_That's it for this chapter. Review please and tell me what you think. _


	3. Chapter 3

_Greetings everyone! Sorry for the delay. You can all blame college. If I haven't mentioned this before, this story takes place after Ultimate Alien, so the existence of aliens is well know. These first few chapters also take place during Ben and Gwen's summer vacation before their senior year, so that's why they don't have to worry about school just yet. Anyway, here's the next chapter!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything about Ben 10. Don't sue me.  
_

* * *

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**Chapter Three**

When Ben told Kevin that he could still faintly taste things, the first thing Kevin did was drive him to Mr. Smoothie and buy him a large mango-chocolate-strawberry smoothie that was powerful enough in flavor to almost taste like how a normal smoothie should taste. Ben couldn't exactly understand the reason for this. Maybe Kevin was feeling guilty about the whole spell thing and was trying to make up for it (which was ridiculous because if Kevin and Gwen didn't do what they did, Ben would still be dead).

Whatever the reason, Ben wasn't going to question it. He had turned down breakfast that morning because he still hadn't quite figured out how he was going to eat without chewing his own tongue off (and since he couldn't feel hungry anyway, he didn't see the harm in skipping a few meals), so the smoothie would be his first meal of the day. The fact that there was no chewing involved made it a pretty good meal choice in his opinion.

It was the day after his death and resurrection. The sun was shining, and based on what everyone was wearing, it was a fairly warm day out. After spending the morning being questioned by his parents, Ben had called up Kevin and the older boy picked him up close to noon-ish. Normally Ben would have driven himself wherever he wanted to go since he had his own car and license, and he had been about to do just that, but as he stood in the driveway _not_ feeling the car keys that were in his hand, it occurred to him that it may not be the best idea to be driving when he couldn't even feel the gas or the break peddles.

So with not much else to do (no aliens to deal with, no solutions as of yet to their current problem), and with Kevin feeling some strange need to buy Ben a smoothie after hearing that he can still kind of taste things, the two went to go hang out at Mr. Smoothie (something that was a normal occurrence for them when they didn't have anything to do.) Gwen didn't join them on their trip though. When Kevin called her up, she explained that she was too busy looking for a solution or an answer of some sort to come on a smoothie run with them.

"Did your parents notice anything different?" Kevin asked, taking a sip of his own smoothie.

"Almost immediately," Ben responded, same dull and flat tone that Kevin wasn't sure he'd ever get used to.

"Jeez, Ben, did you even _try_ to smile and act normal?" Kevin asked, exasperated.

"Kind of hard to smile when you can't feel you own face," Ben pointed out before taking another long drink of his smoothie, all the while wondering how he'd be able to tell if he was full.

"But have you even tried?"

Ben gave him a blank look.

"You haven't, have you?" Kevin asked, sighing when he received no response. "Try to smile, right now. Show me what you got."

Ben stared at Kevin for another moment before his brows furrowed and his lips pursed. Finally one side of his mouth quirked up, but with the way his eyes were narrowed in concentration, it looked more like he was wincing than anything.

"This would probably be easier in front of a mirror," Ben finally said, monotonous, always monotonous. "I'll practice later."

With that said, Ben turned his attention to the other people hanging out at the smoothie joint. Every single one of them radiated a wide array of colorful lights and Ben decided it was as good a time as any to try and figure out the meaning behind the colors (that is, assuming he's correct about the colors representing a person's emotional state). He didn't quite know where to start though. No one person had only one specific color. It was always a mix of colors and the colors fluctuated and changed so much that it was difficult to keep up.

'_People, as a whole, are far too unstable with their emotions,_' Ben noted. '_I need to see an emotion in its purest form. But how?_'

If he could figure out what even just one of the colors meant, it would probably make figuring out the rest of the colors a whole lot easier. Finding someone that was _only_ happy, _only_ sad, or _only_ angry wasn't something that he was just going to stumble upon though. He'd need to create a situation of some sort, something that would enhance one particular emotion in a person. Happiness was out. In his current state, Ben doubted he'd be able to make anyone happy. Sadness probably wouldn't work out so well either since he couldn't exactly put the right amount of emotion in his voice to say something that would hurt someone's feelings.

Anger though, that might just work. After all, people were always getting pissed off, and a lot of the time it was over the smallest of things. Yes, anger was Ben's best bet. He could easily make someone angry.

That was why, when a girl was walking by, her attention on her boyfriend and not on her surroundings, Ben stuck his foot out and tripped her.

As she fell to the ground, her boyfriend failing to catch her, he colors flared light purples with hints of pale yellows. When she skinned her knees and palms on the ground, he smoothie spilling across the pavement, shades of blue and green added to the mix.

'_That didn't work,_' Ben thought as he sipped his smoothie. '_Too many colors to follow. Maybe I need to be meaner._'

Any other thoughts he may have had on the matter were interrupted when a large hand grabbed hold of the front of his shirt and dragged him to his feet. His gaze traveled from the girl on the ground up to the enraged face of her boyfriend.

'_Ah, that's more like it,_' Ben thought as he observed the colors that pulsed angrily around the boyfriend. It was all red with splashes of black mixed in. Although it wasn't just one color, like he had been hoping, it was better than the confusing mix of colors he had been seeing on everyone else so far. '_Perhaps there's no one color for one single emotion. Maybe the colors have multiple meanings and by mixing together, they define the emotion that the person is feeling. That complicates things._'

"What the hell was that?" the boyfriend snapped, shaking Ben for emphasis.

"Hey, cool it," Kevin said, his tone threatening as he grabbed the boyfriend by the wrist, squeezing hard until the other boy let Ben go. Putting himself between the omnitrix bearer and the still enraged boyfriend, his hands curled into fists as his colors also flared red with black, Kevin said, "It was an accident."

"No, I did that on purpose," Ben stated simply before taking another drink of his smoothie.

Oranges, greens and purples flickered among the red around Kevin as the older boy sighed in exasperation and muttered, "You are not helping yourself any, Ben."

"It was nothing personal," Ben said as his gaze traveled from the boyfriend, whose anger only seemed to be increasing, to the girl who was now picking herself up off the ground. She sniffled pitifully as she examined her scraped hands. Her colors were fluctuating so wildly that Ben didn't even bother trying to follow them. Obviously he didn't care about causing the girl injury, he couldn't care about much of anything, but the old Ben, the person who he was before his resurrection, probably would, and would be acting differently than how he's acting now.

"Sorry," Ben finally said, but his indifferent tone-of-voice ruined any effect the apology might have had.

"I'll show you sorry," the boyfriend snarled, taking a step forward only to be stopped by a metal-plated arm.

"Back. Off," Kevin growled, both arms coated in metal courtesy of the steel-backing of a nearby chair.

The boyfriend eyed Kevin, weighing the pros and cons of going up against the Osmosian before deciding that it wasn't a fight he could win. Glaring at the two, the boyfriend took a couple steps back from Kevin, his arm wrapping around his girlfriend supportively. As he guided his girlfriend away, he threw one last vicious look over his shoulder and muttered, "_Freak._"

Yet when he said this, it wasn't Kevin and his metal-plated arms he was looking at, it was Ben.

Ben and his dead green eyes.

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* * *

.

As the week went by, Kevin was sure to keep a close eye on Ben just in case another incident like what happened at Mr. Smoothie occurred. It was dangerous to be living on Earth, or any other planet like it for that matter, and not have the same emotional buffer as everyone else. People would notice that something was off with Ben, even if only subconsciously, and what they did notice was bound to make them uneasy.

Which made Kevin uneasy.

With a species as neurotic as the human race, you didn't want to risk spooking them. Kevin figured it was only a matter of time before someone noticed that there was something strange going on with Ben, and he'd be ready to protect the younger boy from whatever reaction they would encounter, especially now that the omnitrix was on the fritz and Ben couldn't use his aliens to defend himself. The damn watch hadn't worked right even once since Ben's resurrection, seeming to be permanently stuck in error-red mode.

"Maybe the watch thinks I need emotions to properly handle the different alien forms," Ben had theorized one day, completely unconcerned as usual by everything that was going wrong in their lives.

It was a good thing Kevin had decided to stick with Ben and keep an eye on him while Gwen searched for a solution because there _had_ been a few other incidents like the one that had happened at Mr. Smoothie. With each incident, Kevin ended up having to intervene before things escalated to a Ben-beating.

At first, Kevin thought that Ben just didn't realize how blunt, cold, and sometimes just plain mean he was being; that without any emotions of his own, he was having trouble understanding all the emotional faux pas he was causing. Although as one week drew closer to two, Kevin couldn't help but notice a pattern. It wasn't a pattern he understood at all, but it was a pattern none-the-less.

Ben pushed down young children in the park and he'd tell the angry parents who came to the child's rescue that he did it on purpose. He told one girl who was putting up posters for her lost dog that he saw her dog get hit by a car, then after she started crying, he responded with, "I'm just kidding, I saw your dog being brought into the pound earlier."

Speaking of which, they had been kicked out of the pound after Ben told all the little kids just what happens to the animals that don't get adopted after a while. On more than one occasion, when Kevin was driving them somewhere, Ben had reached over and beeped the car horn at people, be it someone stopped at a red light or someone crossing the street in the crosswalk. Ben had even crashed a couple funerals (those times hadn't been as bad since all Ben did was sit and watch, but it was still a strange thing to do).

The last straw for Kevin had occurred at a random restaurant they had decided to stop and get food at (Ben for some reason ordering mashed potatoes and tomato soup). It wasn't like it was a romantic restaurant or anything (Kevin would feel foolish for even attempting some sort of romantic gesture on someone who was literally unable to like someone else, let alone love them), so a man getting down on one knee to propose to his girlfriend a few tables over was a little unexpected. Ben's response to such an occurrence was even more unexpected though, not just to Kevin, but to everyone there at the restaurant as well.

Speaking quite clearly over the applause that resulted from the girlfriend saying yes to the proposal, Ben said, "She's cheating on you."

"What?" The man exclaimed, eyes snapping over to his fiancee (though probably not 'his fiancee' at this point).

"Ben!" Kevin said, exasperated and a little horrified, hoping that this wasn't another '_I'm joking_' thing.

"What?" Ben questioned dully. "It's true. I saw her making out with one of the waiters on my way to the bathroom. Shouldn't he know that before marrying her?"

Noticing the murderous stare they were receiving from the cheating _ex_-fiancee as well as the odd looks they were getting from everyone else in the restaurant, Kevin decided it'd be a good time to leave. Grabbing Ben by the arm, Kevin said, "Come one, we're leaving."

"But we haven't even gotten our food yet," Ben pointed out, eyes locked on the now-arguing couple even as Kevin pulled him to the exit.

The old Ben would have whined that last sentence. The old Ben would have also found a more tactful way to tell the proposing man that his girlfriend was a cheating hussy. Kevin never realized just how much he loved all of Ben's little quirks as well as all of the ins and outs of Ben's personality until it was all gone, leaving behind this empty shell-of-a-person.

'_God help me, I even miss all the cocky, borderline-narcissistic, attention-loving aspects of his personality that annoyed me so much in the past,_' Kevin thought with a grimace.

"Kevin-"

"We'll eat somewhere else," Kevin snapped. Reaching the side of his car, Kevin spun Ben around, hands fisting up in the boy's shirt, and demanded, "What is _wrong_ with you?"

"You already know the answer to that," Ben stated.

"No, I mean-" Kevin stumbled over his words. "You've been acting weird ever since that smoothie incident. As _hilarious_ as tormenting children and generally just pissing people off is-" he meant it with the utmost sarcasm, "-emotions or not, that's not how _Ben_ would act."

Guilty. That's how Ben should be feeling. But he wasn't guilty, he couldn't feel guilty. Guilt was beyond him.

"I'm just trying to see emotion in it's purest form," Ben explained.

And that made sense, in a strange sort of way. Kevin couldn't even begin to fathom what it was like to not feel any emotion at all. Maybe it was harder than he realized for Ben to remember what certain emotions were like, as well as how a person acted when experiencing certain emotions. Whenever Kevin was sad, happy, or angry, he never had to stop and think about just what that emotion entailed. He wasn't an actor, and neither was Ben. If they tried to fake happiness, it would just come off as... well... _fake_ happiness. This whole time, Ben had probably just been attempting to learn the specifics of each emotion through observation.

There were easier ways to go about that though.

Releasing Ben's shirt, Kevin sighed as he ran his fingers through his hair, saying, "Why didn't you just watch television or some movies? It'd be a hell of a lot easier."

'_Safer too._'

Ben's head tilted slightly to the side and despite his neutral expression, that small action made him look-

'_Adorable,_' Kevin thought.

The younger boy probably didn't even realize he was doing it.

"Any emotions on television and in movies will be fake," Ben said. "And with reality TV, it's too hard to tell what emotions are real or not."

"So?" Kevin said with a frown, not following Ben's reasoning. "Any emotions you mimic will be fake. What's so wrong with learning the specifics of emotion from someone else who's faking them?"

"'Learning the specifics'? What are-" Ben paused and blinked. "Oh, that. Yes, I guess learning from television about how I should be acting around other people would work just fine."

Kevin was at a loss for words. _'Oh, that'_? What the hell else could they have possibly been talking about?

"Yes, _that_," Kevin finally said, his brows furrowed. "Just what were you talking about before?"

"Nothing yet," Ben said, turning away from Kevin.

'_What does that mean?_'

"I supposed I'll tell you later though," Ben said as he opened up the passenger's side door of the car. "Are we going somewhere else to eat or not?"

Kevin frowned, but walked over to the driver's side door and got in anyway. There was definitely something suspicious going on with Ben, but at the moment, all he could do was watch and wait. If Ben didn't want to talk, he wasn't going to talk. It wasn't like Kevin could try any of the intimidation tactics he had used on Ben to get the boy to talk in the past. After all, you can't intimidate someone who doesn't feel fear.

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* * *

.

"So I heard my parents talking about getting me to go see a psychiatrist," Ben told Kevin and Gwen absentmindedly as the three sat down at a table at Mr. Smoothie, each with their own drink in hand.

It was a serious situation if the concerned look on Gwen's face was anything to go by, but Kevin couldn't help it, he laughed. He nearly snorted smoothie up his nose for his troubles, but he just kept laughing. Seeing the glare Gwen was giving him, he squashed his laughter down to quiet snickers.

"I'm sorry," Kevin said after taking a few deep breaths. "But the thought of Ben, as he is now, having to go see a psychiatrist? I'd pay to see that."

"Somehow I think he or she will be able to see through my sunny disposition the same way my parents were able to," Ben said monotonously.

A grin spread across Kevin's face as he asked, "Did you just joke about something?"

"I've been practicing," Ben said flatly before taking a drink of his smoothie.

"Still need to work on your tone, Benji," Kevin said and Ben hummed in response.

"Would you two cut it out and get serious for just one second?" Gwen snapped, her nerves frayed at the edges from pulling so many all-nighters searching for a solution. She hadn't even wanted to stop for a smoothie break, but Kevin had decided that it'd be best for her sanity and everyone else's safety if she did and Ben was inclined to agree. Having a sleep-deprived, half-Anodite snap and go crazy on the world was something that was best to be avoided.

So near the end of the second week of Gwen relentlessly searching for a solution for their problem, Kevin and Ben went over to her house and kidnapped her. It was a group effort between the two boys and Gwen's brother, and there was some special alien duct tape involved too. Thankfully Gwen had stopped fighting by the time they were half-way to Mr. Smoothie and agreed to cooperate for the rest of their little excursion. Apparently cooperating didn't mean relaxing completely though.

"Looks like Gwen's sunny disposition could use some work too," Kevin muttered to Ben, then grunted when Gwen kicked him in the shin.

"This isn't something to joke about, Kevin," Gwen snapped. "Any psychiatrist Ben sees is probably going to think he's a sociopath or something else of the sort. They're going to want to medicate him. They might even want to lock him up, especially if they think he'll be a danger to the public with the omnitrix on his wrist."

Nodding to what Gwen said, Ben added, "My parents do seem to think I'm disturbed," he paused before repeating part of what Gwen said, in a tone-of-voice similar to what Gwen used when she said it, "'or something else of the sort.'"

To any outsider watching the scene, it would have seemed like an odd thing to do, but Kevin and Gwen were unfazed as it wasn't the first time Ben had mimicked one of them. They knew that he was just practicing being more... human.

"Whatever," Kevin said, honestly not feeling too concerned by the possibility. "If it comes to that, we'll deal with it."

It all just seemed like too unreal of a possibility to even worry about at the moment. Even if it did happen, well, Kevin highly doubted any medication would have any effect at all on Ben. Those sort of medications effected your physical and emotional self, and at the moment, Ben didn't have a connection to either. Also, the thought of any human mental facility keeping Kevin from getting to Ben was laughable. Worst comes to worst, he'd just break the younger teen out.

Surprisingly enough, after drinking their smoothies, Gwen _didn't_ want to go straight back to her house to continue searching through her magic books. She instead wanted to go over to Ben's house to watch a movie and generally just act like normal teenagers. It was her hope that by acting like everything was fine, they could get Ben's parents to believe that there was nothing to be worried about. Kevin wasn't sure how well that would actually work, but he didn't think it could hurt any.

Climbing into his car after Ben got a smoothie refill-to-go, the three headed off to Ben's house. As they turned onto Ben's street though and got closer to the house, a frightening sight met their eyes and Kevin immediately pulled over on the side of the road a few houses down from Ben's. For a while, the three sat in silence, eyes locked on the imposing vehicle before them.

Parked on the side of the road directly out in front of Ben's house was the Rustbucket.

Kevin swore quietly under his breath before cracking a nervous grin at Ben and Gwen, saying, "Think there's any chance your grandpa's not here to see Ben?"

Absolute silence.

"How about any chance of him not noticing anything's wrong with Ben?" Kevin tried again.

He received a blank look from Ben and a dubious look from Gwen.

"Right. Stupid question," Kevin muttered as his eyes traveled back over to the Rustbucket.

'_I am so being sent back to the Null Void._'

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* * *

_That's all for this chapter. I hate leaving you guys hanging like this, but I'm still not 100% sure how the encounter with Grandpa Max is going to go and I wanted to give you all some sort of update after such a long wait (and the next wait will unfortunately be just as long if not longer)._

_Quick question for you all on future possibilities for this story: How do you all feel about mpreg and how do you all feel about me somehow working Ken and Devlin into this?_

_Review please and tell me what you think!_


	4. Chapter 4

_Hello everyone! Here's the next chapter of Numb!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything about Ben 10. Don't sue me. _

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**Chapter Four**

_Sometime in the past..._

People do a lot of crazy things when grieving, especially when grieving for a lost loved-one. Usually they go through all the five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and before they reach the stage of acceptance, a grieving person tends to do things they wouldn't normally do, like getting drunk, arrested, or causing a fight. It was for all these reasons that Max Tennyson decided to keep a close eye on one of his Plumber friends who had recently lost his girlfriend in a car accident.

He apparently didn't watch his friend close enough though. He was still young and wet behind the ears, having been at the Plumbing business for only a few years now. Granted, he had seen his fair share of strange, alien happenings, but he never would have guessed that his friend, a fellow Plumber, would try something like this. It was their responsibility to stop crazy things from happening, not cause them.

Still, the video footage didn't lie. His friend Greg stole a confiscated dark magic book from a security locker at the nearby Plumber Base. Max didn't even want to think about what his friend had in mind for the spells that could be found in that book.

"Greg?" Max called out as he pounded on the front door to his friend's small suburban house. The lights were on inside and Greg's car was parked haphazardly in the driveway. The man was definitely home, but he wasn't answering Max's calls.

'_I should have called someone. I should have _at least_ brought one of the other guys as backup,_' Max thought as he shifted in place.

He hadn't wanted to rat his friend out though. Greg was mourning, he wasn't thinking straight. If Max could get to him before he did anything stupid and talk some sense into him, well, there was no reason to get Greg in trouble with the high-ups, now was there?

"Greg?"

But Greg wasn't answering the door, and Greg had stolen a book full of dark spells that he had every intention of using.

'_Ah, screw it,_' Max thought, shaking his head. '_I'm breaking the door down._'

With a few well-placed kicks, the door swung open, and Max cautiously stepped inside.

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* * *

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_Present day..._

Still parked just a couple houses down from the Rustbucket, Kevin and Gwen were giving Ben a little bit of last-minute coaching on how to act once they got inside.

"Alright," Kevin said, looking over his shoulder at Ben who was sipping on a smoothie in the backseat. "Let's see your smile."

Lowering the smoothie, Ben's lips pulled back so that all of his teeth were showing in a smile that looked rather... manic.

"Better..." Kevin said slowly. "Better than I've seen before, if not mildly disturbing."

"Try smiling a _little less_," Gwen suggested, frowning herself.

The manic smile dropped just a bit.

"Less than that," Gwen said, and the smile dropped further. "...There! Perfect."

It was the most genuine smile Kevin had seen on Ben's face since that horrible, bloody night just a few weeks back. It was... It was a nice sight to see on the younger boy's face. Unfortunately, the smile only lasted for a brief moment before Ben's neutral expression came back.

"How am I suppose to mimic that what I don't even know what 'that' feels like to begin with?" Ben pointed out quite logically.

Kevin sighed, "Okay, forget smiling. It's all about how you sound when you talk. If your grandpa asks how you're doing, you say...?"

"I'm fine," Ben replied dully.

"That's it, we're screwed," Kevin said, his head thudding down onto the steering wheel.

"Come on, Ben," Gwen said encouragingly. "You've been practicing all week. You can do better than that."

"I'm..." Ben began slowly, tone returning to his voice. "I'm fine. Alright guys? Everything will be fine."

And for a moment, they almost believed him.

"It's the best we're going to get for now," Gwen said, giving Ben a small smile. "Let's head inside."

"Okay," Kevin griped, not at all happy with the prospects of what was about to go down. Pulling the gear into 'Drive' he inched the rest of the way forward to Ben's house, parking against the curb behind the Rustbucket.

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* * *

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Ever since Carl and Sandra found out about Ben's secret involvement with aliens, Max had been expecting to get calls like this where his son and daughter-in-law were concerned about Ben, believing that maybe something 'alien' was causing a problem. He was surprised he hadn't gotten any of these sort of calls sooner, but he supposed that Carl and Sandra had wanted to deal with any problems that had come up in the past in their own way without having to run to 'good old Dad' for help. Whatever may be going on with Ben right now though must have thrown Carl and Sandra for a loop, so Max agreed to step in and have a talk with his grandson; see if he could find out what the problem was if there was any problem at all.

At the sound of the front door opening, Max gave Carl and Sandra a reassuring smile before leaving the two concerned parents waiting behind in the kitchen. Standing in the living room was Ben, Gwen and Kevin. Three pairs of eyes snapped over to him when he stepped into the living room himself.

"Hey kids," Max said, giving the three teens a smile. "Ben, can I talk with you in another room about something?"

"Oh, well, if you're just here to see Ben, I guess I'll be going," Kevin immediately said, already stepping back towards the front door. A firm grip on his forearm courtesy of Gwen stopped his retreat however.

"Remember, Kevin, we were going to watch a movie?" Gwen said a little forcefully.

"What, we're still doing that?" Kevin asked incredulously.

"Yes, we'll watch it after Ben and Grandpa talk," Gwen said before turning back to Max and flashing him a smile.

Ben, looking as if he were ignoring the entire exchange, said to Max, "We can talk up in my room."

Without waiting for a word of confirmation, his grandson set his smoothie down on the coffee table and walked right past him, heading up the stairs to his room. For someone who had just been told by an adult that a potentially serious talk needed to be had, Ben's face was surprisingly blank whereas Gwen and Kevin were acting oddly nervous. It was Max's first sign that there was something going on with the three teenagers. Giving the remaining two teens another smile, Max headed on up the stairs after his grandson.

Ben had his back to him when he entered the room, and was instead focused on absentmindedly sifting through the junk piled up on his desk. In an attempt to ease himself into the heart of what might be going on, Max started off with some small talk, "So how's your summer going?"

Ben paused in sorting through the junk just long enough to throw Max an expressionless glance over his shoulder. As he continued his sorting, he said, "So far it's been... fine."

"Yeah? Has anything interesting been going on?"

Ben quickly turned to face Max, one of his hands knocking a bunch of stuff over on the desk, though he didn't seem to notice or care. Fixing Max with a calculating stare, he said bluntly, "Look, can we skip the pleasantries and get straight to the reason why you're here. My parents called you, right?"

"They're just concerned about you," Max explained.

That was an understatement though. Sandra and Carl were worried out of their minds, and the story they painted for Max was disconcerting to say the least. '_He never smiles or laughs anymore, but he never gets sad or angry either. He's just ... blank! It's like having a zombie living in the house. He even keeps passing up on meals, and when has Ben ever skipped out on a good meal?_'

Talking with Ben now, even if only briefly, Max couldn't help but see where his son and daughter-in-law were coming from. The blankness that they had spoken of was quite obvious, and it was unusual to be seeing it on his grandson.

But then Ben's lips twitched up into a small but crooked smile and suddenly his voice was full of compassion and cheer as he said, "Well you can tell them that I'm fine because I am, in fact, perfectly alright."

Though the words sounded genuine, something just seemed off about the way Ben spoke, the way he acted. It felt unnatural, not at all like the grandson he had spent so much time with in the past, and when the occupational hazards of his job could involve an alien possessing, or even completely replacing a loved one with a cloned copy, it only made sense that Max was suspicious. Something felt wrong about the entire situation; the way Ben was behaving, not to mention how nervous Gwen and Kevin had acted downstairs. He wasn't about to jump to conclusions though, because the problem could actually be something small and he could just be blowing the whole thing out of proportion.

"Ben, you know that your parents and I care about you, right? If you're ever having a problem, alien or otherwise, you can come to us," Max said sincerely, briefly resting a hand on Ben's shoulder. "We're here to help."

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* * *

.

Ben watched the wide array of colors fluctuate around his grandfather. He had gotten a little better at reading the colors what with all the observation he had been doing over the past two weeks and he wondered just how well he was doing at reading Grandpa Max's emotions. While there were several hints of different colors mixed in with Max's lights, a mesh of purple and blue was the main focus. The different shades to each color meant different things. This particularly deep shade of blue he saw around his grandfather, Ben had come to associate with sadness, but with the purple mixed in the way it was, Ben would say that Grandpa Max's main emotion was concern. That was fairly obvious without having to read his colors though; it was the other hints of color that Ben was having trouble figuring out.

Turning his attention more fully back to the situation at hand, Ben honestly couldn't figure out why they didn't just tell Grandpa Max what had happened. He had helped them out with problems in the past and Ben couldn't ever really remember a time when his grandfather had given them a reason not to trust him.

The more Ben thought about it, the more he came to decide that Kevin and Gwen were just blinded by their concern over getting in trouble. Ben could no longer feel concerned or worried though, thus he couldn't see what the big deal about telling was. So they might get reprimanded, possibly yelled at or even punished. What was the big deal about that? Grandpa Max wasn't some evil alien villain. The worse punishment he could give them was grounding them from certain Plumber duties or maybe have them do some grunt work at a Plumber base.

Ben leaned back against the desk behind him with a sigh. This whole jumping through hoops thing to keep secrets was a waste of time. He might be stuck like this for the rest of his life, and it was only a matter of time before people noticed that there was something different about him. Wouldn't it make sense to get explanations out of the way now?

"_Ben_," Grandpa Max said, sounding startled for some reason.

"What?" Ben asked, forcing the same startled tone into his question with a hint of curiosity mixed in.

"Your hand, you.." Grandpa Max gestured to Ben's right and Ben looked down to see that when he had leaned back against the desk, he had pressed his right hand into a small pile of tacks. Not noticing such a thing would be a bit hard to explain, so it would seem that the decision to tell had been made for him.

'_I should really clean up my room sometime,_' Ben thought absentmindedly as he raised his hand up and plucked the tacks from it as if it was no big deal. Tiny droplets of blood started to bead up on his palm. Wiping them off on his pant leg, he looked up at Grandpa Max.

"You're right, something did happen," Ben finally said. "We had a problem and we fixed it. There were some unforeseen side-effects," he looked down at his pricked hand, flexing it a few times before looking back up at his grandfather, "but we're in the process of fixing that too. Well... Gwen's in the process of fixing it since she's the only one who really understands this magic stuff."

"This is a magic related problem?" Grandpa Max asked, looking confused.

"Magic was the solution to the original problem," Ben explained. "I guess you could say that the current problem is magic related, though at this point, we really can't be one-hundred percent sure of that."

It was clear that his grandfather didn't understand what he was saying, but then, Ben hadn't actually given him a straight answer.

"Ben, just tell me what happened," Grandpa Max said, his concern was palpable.

Sometimes being blunt and direct was the best way to go.

"I died about two weeks back," He said with a simple shrug. "I'd say 'sorry for your loss,' but seeing as how I'm still here and alive, I don't really see what the point is."

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* * *

.

His grandfather had gone silent after that last statement and didn't say a word until they were back down in the living room.

"Why don't you kids head out to the RV," Grandpa Max said. The suggestion was not optional. "I need to have a talk with all three of you."

"Is everything alright in here?" Ben's dad asked, standing at the entrance to the kitchen and eyeing Grandpa Max.

"Everything's fine, son," Grandpa Max said. "Just didn't realize that this was something that involved all three of them."

His grandfather's tone was carefully controlled and blank, but the colors around him were fluctuating and pulsing violently. The colors of concern were there, but so were the colors of anger (bright reds with black mixed in), along with a couple other color combinations Ben couldn't identify.

"You told, didn't you?" Kevin hissed quietly as they made their way outside to the Rustbucket, Grandpa Max falling into step behind them.

"I didn't see the point in not telling," Ben said carelessly. "He would have found out eventually."

"Maybe not if you didn't _say_ anything," Kevin growled under his breath. "Should have known better than to send you up there to talk to him by yourself."

Gwen remained nervously quiet.

Silence fell over them all once inside the Rustbucket. Ben, Gwen, and Kevin took a seat around the small kitchen table bolted into the wall while Grandpa Max paced back and forth in the RV. The tension was so thick, you could have cut it with a knife.

"Why didn't you come to me when this happened?" Grandpa Max asked, disappointment clear in his tone while the reds of anger were clear in his colors.

"We panicked," Gwen said, sounding guilty. "I mean, we all knew the job could be dangerous, but we haven't even had to deal with severe injuries before, let alone one of us..."

"Dying," Ben said, finishing her sentence when her voice failed.

"Yes, thank you, Ben," Gwen said as her guilt faded just a bit to be replaced with exasperation.

"You told me that magic was the solution, Ben," Grandpa Max said. "Just what sort of spell did you kids use? Time travel or-"

"A resurrection spell," Gwen said quietly. "The only one that didn't require a sacrifice."

His grandfather's eyes grew dark as pale, sickly yellows bled into his colors. Ben wasn't quite sure what that particular color meant, but he was sure that it wasn't a positive emotion.

"Do you realize just how dangerous those types of spells are?" Grandpa Max asked, anger now clear in his tone.

"Hey, don't blame Gwen. I helped with the spell too and it was my idea to begin with," Kevin said, his own colors growing an angry red with black hues. "If we didn't do what we did, Ben would still be dead. Shouldn't that be what's important here?"

"Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that Ben's alright," Grandpa Max said. He briefly looked over at Ben, the colors of concern taking over, but a hint of that pale yellow still lingered. His grandfather adverted his eyes. "But There's a reason that even magic users that practice dark magic don't go around bringing back the dead. In most cases what you bring back isn't the same person that you lost to begin with. Whether your intentions were good or not, when you open up a door to the afterlife like that, you're giving something dark a chance to get through instead."

"Well I'm not sorry we did it," Kevin said stubbornly.

Gwen quietly agreed," I'm not sorry either... but.. what you're talking about, Grandpa, could that have something to do with what's wrong with Ben now?"

"Those 'side-effects' you mentioned before?" Grandpa asked, his gaze switching back over to Ben. The anger he expressed over their reckless actions faded to a worried look. It wasn't exactly comforting, not that Ben really cared either way.

"I basically can't feel anything physically or emotionally," Ben said as if it was no big deal. "Hence why Mom and Dad got so concerned and called you up. I haven't been so great at faking emotions these past two weeks and they picked up on it. I've been practicing, but I guess based on how quickly you figured out that something wasn't right, I still have more practicing to do." Drumming his fingers on the table, he forced a bit of a pouting tone to his voice as he asked, "Be honest, can you all tell how much I don't care about this conversation we're having right now?"

Really though, what was the point in faking an emotion for someone who knew you were faking to begin with?

"Because if it's all right by everyone here," Ben continued, his voice reverting back to its usual monotone, "I'm going to go back to talking like this until we have to go back inside to my parents."

"You really don't feel anything at all, Ben?" Grandpa Max asked, an expression on his face that Ben didn't care to try and decipher. His colors though were a mix between sadness and concern and that odd pale yellow kept occasionally popping back up.

"Nope, not a thing," Ben said with a careless shrug, slouching in his seat.

"Unfortunately, I've never heard of anything like this happening," Grandpa Max sighed. Seeing the worried look on Gwen's face, his expression softened. "Believe me Gwen, if something dark from the afterlife had come back instead of Ben, or come back _with_ Ben, we would have known it by now."

And now Kevin was giving Ben a peculiar look.

"What?" Ben asked, turning dead eyes on his Osmosian friend.

"Nothing," Kevin said with a slight shake of his head before looking away.

The older boy's colors were of concern along with other shades of blue. A faint red with some pink hovered along the edges of it all briefly before the blue overtook it. Ben would have never thought in the past that Kevin could be so complex.

Rolling his eyes, Ben turned his attention back to the conversation at hand, saying, "Okay, so we've established that I'm not some evil spirit from the other side of... where ever, and we're right back at square one. Is there a plan somewhere in all this talking?"

"I'll start doing some research, see if I can find out what went wrong," Grandpa Max said. "I'll leave your name out of it though, Ben, and we're keeping the full truth about what happened between just us four, alright? Nobody else can know about his death or the resurrection spell. That sort of thing makes both humans _and_ aliens nervous."

"Alright, and I'll keep researching too," Gwen said.

"Research _only._ Run it by me first before you go trying anymore spells," Grandpa Max said sternly.

"What do we say when everyone start asking why Ben's acting so differently?" Kevin asked, arms crossed over his chest as he gave Ben a doubtful look.

Apparently Kevin didn't have high hopes for Ben's acting ability. Ben was inclined to agree with his doubts though especially since he didn't care if he appeared to be abnormal to the rest of the world.

"We'll tell them it was a magic-related accident and leave it at that," Grandpa Max said, "but hopefully it won't come to that because you'll be doing your best to act normal around everyone, alright Ben?"

"I suppose I'll do my best," Ben said dully.

There was that pale yellow in his grandfather's colors again. Sadness was a deep blue color, concern a blue with purple, anger was red and black, but those were the most common emotions he had been seeing the past two weeks. Anything more than that had been too fleeting for him to pick up on just yet, so just what sort of emotion kept afflicting his grandfather? What could pale yellow mean and where had he seen it before?

"On that note, I'll have to tell your parents what's going on. I'll leave out the part about your accident, Ben, they're concerned enough as it is," Grandpa Max said, clearly not looking forward to _that_ conversation if his tone was anything to go by.

"I guess that works. I won't have to fake emotions around them anymore, not that I was doing a convincing job of it in the first place," Ben said.

"No, Ben," Grandpa Max said sternly, making it clear that this discussion was not up for negotiations. "You'll be acting as normal around them as you will be for the rest of the public. This may not mean much to you right now, but they're worried about you. If acting sincere around them will ease some of their stress, when we get you back to normal, you'll be thankful that you put the effort in."

It would be pointless to argue, so Ben just hummed in agreement before asking, "Are we done here?"

"Just one last thing," Grandpa Max said before gesturing at the omnitrix. "I've noticed the omnitrix hasn't been working the entire time I've been here. How long has it been like this?"

"It hasn't worked at all for the past two weeks," Ben explained.

"Not since we brought Ben back," Kevin added.

"Then I'm sorry Ben, but with the condition that you're in and without the omnitrix to back you up, it's not safe for you to go on anymore missions," Grandpa Max said. "I'm officially grounding you from Plumber duties."

"I can still fire a weapon though," Ben pointed out logically. "You do just fine on Plumber missions without alien powers to back you up, and wouldn't I do better on missions now that I don't have emotions to distract me?"

"Having emotions on a mission is _important_. It allows you to judge if you're making the right decision," Grandpa Max said.

"Plus, Ben, you could get hurt and you wouldn't even feel it," Gwen said, her colors and her expression displaying her concern. "I have to agree with Grandpa on this one. Going on a mission would be too dangerous for you."

So they just wanted him to sit around doing nothing but putting on a show for the rest of the universe that he was completely normal and fine?

For the briefest of seconds, he felt a tiny surge of something deep within that made his hands curl into fists, but it was gone before he could hardly even register it or recognize what it was. His hands relaxed on the table.

'_How odd._'

He pushed the event to the back of his mind as unexplainable as well as unimportant.

"Fine, no more missions," he finally said.

After all, he had no emotional attachment to doing work for the Plumbers, so why would it matter if he could no longer help them with various alien problems. There were other things he could do to occupy his time, such as practicing his acting skills and figuring out what other colors that people gave off meant like the pale yellow his grandfather kept displaying.

Wait...

He remembered now, there was pale yellow when the girl that he tripped fell, pale yellow when Gwen and Kevin had been discussing whether or not he might be bleeding internally, and then today, pale yellow when he first told his grandfather that he had died and again when they told him about the resurrection spell.

'_Hmm, maybe...?_'

Then again, his grandfather had been displaying pale yellow throughout most of their conversation, so could Ben really use him as an example? Perhaps a test was in order?

"How would someone even know if a dark spirit had gotten through from the afterlife?" Ben asked, his blank stare monitoring the colors around him. "Would the fact that I'm hearing a voice telling me to do things be a good sign of that?"

Like a drop of ink into water, pale yellow spread out among everyone's colors, as did absolute silence.

"I'm kidding guys," he said, raising an eyebrow at them, or at least, he tried to raise an eyebrow. He couldn't be sure how successful he actually was. "It was a joke. You can't take a joke?"

"Not when you say it in _that_ voice," Kevin said, the pale yellow fading from his colors and from Gwen's colors as well.

"I would kick you if I knew you could feel it," Gwen said, glaring at Ben.

While he raised his hands defensively, giving Gwen what he hoped was an innocent look as he endured the playful ribbing from both her and Kevin, he thought back to the expressions he had just seen on their faces. Could it possibly be that pale yellow meant someone was afraid? Granted, the 'test' he just did couldn't exactly be considered fool-proof. There could be a couple different emotional reactions to what he had said.

'_Maybe I should set aside some time in the future to push someone off of something just to be sure,_' Ben mused, but immediately discarded the idea as something the 'old Ben' wouldn't approve of. Considering the other circumstances in the past though that he had seen the pale yellow color present for, Ben was almost positive that it was the color of fear.

Why was it then, that the pale yellow in his grandfather's colors had yet to fade? For that matter, why had his grandfather been feeling even a hint of fear sporadically throughout this entire conversation?

Just what was he afraid of?

.

* * *

.

_Sometime in the past..._

"Greg?" Max shouted as he walked into his friend's house, but still there was no answer. Maybe he was over-reacting about this. Maybe Greg hadn't taken the book for anything bad at all. Maybe Greg just wanted to destroy the book himself to prevent anyone else from taking it.

Hearing a quiet shuffling noise, Max cautiously followed it down the hall toward what he knew to be the living room. Nothing could have prepared him though for what he saw when he stepped into his friend's living room.

There was blood everywhere.

It was splattered and smeared on the walls, it stained the furniture, and there were puddles of it collected up on the hardwood floors. In the center of all this horror lay Greg, and crouched down over Greg, her arms elbow deep within the cavity of his friend's chest, was Greg's recently deceased girlfriend. Her pale skin and white funeral dress was stained red and her long dark hair hung over her face in bloody ringlets.

"Mine. So handsome you are," she giggled, her arms shift around in the gore of her boyfriend's body. "My perfect husband. So perfect for me. Marry me. Take care of me and love me. Yes, yes, I do. I love you so. Forever. My husband forever."

As Max shakily reached for his Plumber-issued laser gun and stepped back, the floorboards creaked beneath his foot. The deranged dead woman's head snapped up, her bloodshot eyes locking onto Max as she shrieked, "Mine! Not yours! Stay back from my husband!"

Ripping her arms from Greg's chest, she lunged at Max with her fingers curled into claws and her mouth wide open in a snarl. Quickly backpedaling, Max fired off one shot and the laser hit her dead on. She stumbled back for a second, then came at him once more, so Max kept firing shot after shot until she lay still on the ground. In the end, it had taken eight hits from his gun before she went down for good.

His breathing coming in panicked gasps, he raced out of the house and called the Plumber base for backup.

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* * *

_Bang-shabam! That's all for this chapter. Man, Max Tennyson is a hard character to write, especially when things are from his perspective. Hopefully I didn't mess up his character too badly. u.u;_

_Ahem, anyway, after giving it a lot of thought, I decided against making this an eventual mpreg fic. Thank you everyone for your advice and comments on the subject, it helped out a lot! However, even though there will be no mpreg in this fic, that does not completely discount the possibility of future offspring in this story (I've had an idea for that long before I considered and then decided against the mpreg route). Don't worry about there being some random heterosexual experience though, this will always be a Bevin slash fic._

_Review please and tell me what you think!_


	5. Chapter 5

_Hello everyone! Yet another chapter of Numb for you all. Thank you to everyone for your wonderful reviews! They keep a girl going. :)_

_Disclaimer: I don't own anything about Ben 10. Don't sue me. _

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**Chapter 5**

"_Smile."_

"_Enough with the monotone already!"_

"_Can't you laugh a little more often?"_

What was 'normal'?

It was just a concept, wasn't it? A previously decided-upon state of being that varied from society to society. What was considered normal in American culture was in fact very different than what was considered normal is, say, Chinese or French culture. Shouldn't he be asking himself then what being a normal American meant since he was from America?

That wasn't quite the right question though and anyway, generalizing an entire society, no matter what society it might be, meant resorting to stereotypes.

So then the right question?

What was normal... _considered normal..._ for the human species as a whole?

Yes, there it was. What was normal for a human? There were a couple of different qualifications one had to meet, wasn't there, to be considered _normal? _The first one Ben could think of was that a normal person had to be able to interact with and/or contribute to society in some way, or else everything would have fallen apart a long time ago.

He was certainly capable of that. Well... at least partly capable. Clearly he could interact with the world around him, but at the same time, he also tended to _unnerve_ the world around him and it was pretty much agreed upon that a normal person doesn't scare society when he or she interacts with society. So, alright, he didn't completely fit that qualification.

The next thing that came to mind when considering the definition of normalcy for a human was that one needed to be, to an extent, psychologically sound. The reason why it was only 'to an extent' was because practically everybody had some sort of psychological problem going on with them these days, but as long as it was mild (and it didn't prevent you from interacting or contributing to society, referring back to his first point), one could still be considered 'normal.'

Ben certainly wasn't crazy, yet he wasn't really _anything_ when you thought about it. He had a feeling though that any therapist or psychiatrist out there would not agree that he was psychologically stable because of this nothingness.

Which led him to the last thing that came to mind when defining what was normal, perhaps the most important qualification of all:

Emotions.

Normalcy all connected back to emotions, didn't it? Being normal meant that you had to react to situations with the correct emotional response. You were sad at funerals, you laughed when something was funny and at the same time appropriate to laugh at, you smiled and you were happy when there was something to be happy about.

"_You need to be more sincere." _

"_No, see, that just came out as sarcastic."_

To be normal meant to lie.

That was the truth of the matter that people either weren't aware of or didn't want to be aware of. And he didn't just mean that by pretending to have emotions, he would be lying. No, he meant that half the time, people's emotions, the normality they portrayed, was a lie in itself.

Those situations he mentioned before ̶ the funeral, the funny situation, the happy situation ̶ the previously decided-upon _correct _emotional response was just what people displayed on the outside. Sure, there were plenty of people whose outside emotional response matched how they were feeling on the inside, but Ben was seeing more and more instances where a person would display one emotion while feeling something completely different on the inside. This certainly made figuring out what colors represented what emotion more difficult than it should have been.

That person in the park who laughed at his friend's joke was actually fuming on the inside. The girl who worked at Mr. Smoothie who would smile at him when she gave him his order was actually really sad on the inside. Even his own parents, who smiled at him and wished him a good first day back at school, were filled with concern.

And his grandfather, hiding his fear every time he stopped by to check up on Ben?

Everyone hid so much, suppressed so much (a part of Ben wondered how people would react if they knew that he could see through their lies. He doubted they would appreciate it. Most likely, they would see it as an invasion of their privacy).

Was anyone actually normal? Ben was beginning to think not.

So then honestly, what did they expect of him?

"_You need to act more normal."_

"_People are beginning to notice."_

"_Ben, you're not even trying."_

It was like asking a mouse to stop being a mouse. It was expecting too much.

Be more normal. Act more normal. That's what they would say to him. Normal, no _more_ normal than that.

So then lie, right? Smile, or at least attempt to smile because he still couldn't actually feel himself smile, so who knows if he actually did it right. Laugh. _Yes, thank you, Mom. Dinner was delicious. No, Dad, I'm alright. _Smile, at least try to. _Yes, I've finished my homework. School was alright. Kind of boring but... you know. _Smile, nod, more happiness. _Senior year, yeah, pretty exciting. _What would any teen say at this point? _I can't wait to graduate. _

Now be concerned, be curious. _How'd the mission go? _Act like he actually cares how the mission went.

What tone would one use to express the fact that he doesn't appreciate being left behind, yet at the same time understands _why_ he was left behind when in reality he doesn't understand their logic behind that decision? Oh screw it, that's too complicated to bother with and even though he doesn't agree with their choice to leave him out of missions, he doesn't care either way. Just be more concerned than before. _Is everyone okay? _

Pretend that he actually cares about everyone's welfare. Now respond with sincerity in his tone. _Yeah, Grandpa, everything's going alright with me. You know, considering..._

The monotone slips past his filters for just a moment ̶

_Why do you always ask me that?_

̶ but oh well, it happens, and at least he held back his question of just what it is that his grandfather is so afraid of.

The old Ben would be feeling left out, frustrated over being banned until further notice from Plumber missions, the old Ben would balk at the thought that, '_I supposed that not having missions gives me more time to focus on my homework now that school has started.' _Anger, irritation, sadness, the old Ben would be feeling a lot of things if he could, but he couldn't, so he wasn't.

And now the new Ben was left wondering on multiple occasions why he bothered putting on a show for people who knew that he was faking. He had asked just that question many times, not because he wanted an answer, but because he wanted everyone to realize how pointless the whole thing was.

They never came to the same conclusion as him though and they always gave him a similar response. It would seem that whenever he slipped into monotone, he tended to _stay_ in monotone until someone pointed it out to him.

The old Ben definitely wouldn't appreciate being corrected all the time.

So by staying in '_normal mode,' _even around the people who knew that he was acting, there would be less of a chance of him being his usual monotonous and apparently disturbing self around other people, people who weren't aware that he had only been _pretending_ to be normal the whole time. Ben had a feeling that part of the reason was also because his acting made everyone feel a whole lot more comfortable in general.

So be normal. Be _more_ normal _all the time. _

Would the fact that his parents weren't exactly acting normal according to society's standards be a good enough excuse for him to get out of having to act normal?

Their response to the half-truth about his condition started out in a way one would expect any parent to react. They were worried, concerned, a little angry that they hadn't been told sooner, and then they made him go see a doctor.

'Normal,' right?

Then they made him go see another doctor, for a second opinion.

Still pretty 'normal.'

Then they made him go see a third doctor, and then a forth doctor.

...A little excessive, but still 'normal' for any concerned, over-protective parents.

None of the doctors could find anything physically wrong with him aside from the 'condition' he had that prevented him from feeling pain (they used some long complicated term that Ben didn't bother remembering, hereditary sensory something-something), and since the condition had no cure, there wasn't a lot that could be done. So his parents picked the best doctor out of the four and set it up so that he went in for regular check-ups.

Ben could accept that. It wasn't like he had anything better to do, it wasn't like he could actually feel the needles they kept poking him with. The regular check-ups should mark the end of his parent's over-protective rampage... Right?

The next 'expert' his parents had him go see was some sort of shaman, which was definitely not normal by most people's standards.

Who was he kidding though? He should have expected something like this from the start from his parents.

Following the shaman's visit was a psychic, and then some sort of modern-day witch, and then a whole slew _interesting characters_ that offered some sort of healing talent that you wouldn't find in any hospital. Ben didn't bother learning any of their official titles after the witch because their methods never did anything and they never came back for another visit.

It wasn't like he didn't believe in magic, he'd seen plenty of it in action both from Gwen and from Charmcaster. The people who came through his house though, they either didn't truly know what they were doing or they were using some divine or magical method that he'd never actually seen before, and that couldn't actually help him with his condition in the first place.

Smile though, smile! Greet each guest kindly because even though most people would find his parents' methods crazy, even though he himself kind of finds their methods crazy, this is just their own unique way of trying to help him. They care about him, they're concerned, and although he can't return the feelings, he can understand that someone caring for him, even when he's in this state, means something. He's already humoring them by faking emotions, so why not humor them by going along with the different rituals?

Some sort of dried plant mixture burned in a bowl nearby, sending up streams of smoke that lazily drifted around them, spreading throughout the room. If the smoke had a scent, it wasn't strong enough to pick up on (much like his sense of taste, his sense of smell had been severely dulled. Ben considered himself lucky that he could still see and hear everything as clearly as before his death). Though he couldn't feel the smoke filling his lungs, his body still seemed to know that it was there and coughed a couple times because of it. They'd had to turn off the smoke detectors beforehand so that the beeping wouldn't interrupt anything.

The oddly dressed man who led the ritual had Ben and his parents sit in a circle and join hands. The man walked in circles around them, humming some sort of tune and chanting in a different language. The man had some sort of staff, or wand, or stick, or _something_ that had a bunch of intricate carvings on it and it had some sort of large animal's tooth or claw molded onto the end of it. As the man chanted, he waved the stick thing over them with one hand while ringing a bell with the other.

'_The old Ben would probably find this whole thing really embarrassing,' _he mused as he waited for the ritual to be over with so that they could go eat dinner.

Then, as the man waved the stick thing down in front of Ben, something suddenly surged through him that was so completely unexpected and foreign after not having felt _anything _for so long that it took him a few seconds to realize that it was pain,_ excruciating pain;_ pain so searing and horrible and unlike any pain that he had ever felt before. He was only able to suck in a startled breath before he was paralyzed by it, and though the whole agonizing thing felt like it had dragged on for hours, in reality it had only lasted a span of several seconds before his eyes rolled back into his head and he passed out.

.

* * *

.

When he awoke, it was both to the sound of his mother's voice softly calling his name as well as to a dull ache that seemed to resonate everywhere and yet from nowhere in particular all at the same time. The ache wasn't even close to being on the same level as the pain that had knocked him out beforehand, just a mild inconvenience in comparison, yet its presence and the fact that he couldn't pinpoint where the ache was coming from was... _stifling_ in a way.

This wasn't an ache that he could hug close to his body in an attempt at easing his discomfort, like one might an injured arm. There was no combating it because he still couldn't feel a thing, so there was nothing that actually ached, and yet somehow the ache was everywhere, completely inescapable.

An odd situation, to be sure. Had his emotions currently been present, he was sure that he'd have been panicking by this point. He supposed that he should consider himself lucky that he was still as emotional as a brick wall.

"Ben, are you alright?"

Smile, lie, tell them that his passing out was probably due to breathing in too much of the smoke. Divert their attention to dinner, to school, to _something_ other than what just happened because if they got it into their minds that whatever strange ritual they just did actually had some effect, they might want to try it again, which meant that he could be at risk of feeling that horrible pain again.

Emotions or not, it was clear to Ben that it would be in his best interests to avoid any such scenario.

His parents only partially took the bait. Although they agreed to sit down for dinner, they still seemed to think that there was something more to his passing out and so they invited the latest spiritual expert who ran the ritual to stay for dinner so that they could discuss said ritual as well as any future rituals.

The idea of future rituals under this man's guidance did not settle well in Ben's mind. Anything the man had to offer was of no interest to Ben, and would most likely be a hindrance to the emotionless teen in the future. While he could understand that some things that helped you could hurt, Ben had a hard time believing that something that could hurt _that much_ could be good for you in any way.

The man needed to go, it was as plain and simple as that.

.

* * *

.

The opportunity to actually do something didn't come until later on, some time after the ache had faded and he was left in complete unfeeling nothingness once more. He was in the process of washing the dinner dishes, playing his role as the helpful son, and that's what a 'helpful son' would do, right? Help out with chores around the house?

Keeping his eyes on the dishes he scrubbed so that he could actually be sure that he was washing anything at all, he half listened to the conversation going on behind him, absorbing the fact that his parents were talking about possibly having this 'magical expert' come back for another visit. The man in question began to discuss his fees, and that was another thing that Ben didn't think his old self would appreciate, the fact that his parents were paying for each one of these pointless endeavors.

His mother soon left to go grab her checkbook, and when she couldn't find it in its usual spot, his father went to go help her look, leaving just him and this magical expert in the kitchen alone together. Ben paused in his scrubbing for just a moment, knowing that he wouldn't get a chance that was any better than this, so he opened his mouth to speak, deciding to be his true current self; the person that seemed to be unsettling so many people that he knew, the person that everyone felt would be best hidden behind a mask of normalcy.

"I don't want you to come back for another visit," he said, natural monotonous tone in place.

"I'm sorry?" the man questioned, clearly confused.

"Let me rephrase that," Ben said, blindly reaching to grab the next thing to wash from the soapy dishwater. "You _won't_ be coming back for another visit. You're services are not welcome here."

"That's not really up to you, kid," the man said, sounding amused. "You're parents are pretty insistent on me coming back, and since they're paying me to be here, their say is final."

"You're mistaken," Ben said as he pulled a butcher knife out of the water and very careful ran the sponge along the blade. "My parents are doing this for my sake, so this directly involves me. Though their hearts are in the right place, whether my parents know it or not, my say is final."

He rinsed off the knife, grabbing the nearby dish towel to dry it off. Turning to the man, he ran the cloth along the blade as he continued, "Think of it this way: You're the doctor, and I'm the patient refusing your treatment. I would hope you're smart enough to know that nothing good can come from a doctor who treats a patient that does not want the treatment."

He put the knife away into the wooden knife block a bit more forcefully than he meant to.

"I think it would be in everyone's best interests if you don't bother coming back," Ben said, but then his parents came back into the room at that point and so he turned back to washing the dishes as if the conversation hadn't occurred at all.

Apparently the man was more thick-headed than Ben realized because rather than take his immediate leave, he continued his conversation with Ben's parents, his tone revealing no nervousness that Ben had been trying to instill in him. Grabbing a dirty glass, Ben continued his scrubbing anew.

'_Perhaps I'm not as unsettling as everyone has led me to believe,'_ he mused dully.

Still, he snuck a look over his shoulder at the man's colors to see if he could get a reading of some sort. The colors were sporadic though. There was an occasional flash of anger, there was the sunny yellows and whites that so far Ben believed could be happiness. There was also a yellowish green that he hadn't yet identified, but knew it wasn't the same shade of green he had come to associate with envy. The sunny yellow though, it would occasionally grow pale, and Ben wondered if that meant fear or if that just meant less happiness.

'_In other words, too difficult to pick out any sort of emotion clearly enough,'_ Ben concluded, still scrubbing the dishes, but now not even really paying attention to that. Instead, he wondered if he'd have to suffer another visit from this man. If the man did come back, should he do anything? What could he really even do? The threat had been hollow at best.

'_Suppose I could hide out at Gwen's or Kevin's place,'_ he thought. '_I could tell my parents that I'm too busy with school work.'_

His mother's horrified gasp tore him from his thoughts.

"Oh, Ben, what did you do?" she said, suddenly by his side. He hadn't even noticed her walk up next to him just moments before.

Ben blinked, looking up at her.

"Huh?"

Rather than answer him, she quickly grabbed his arms and pulled both of his hands out of the soapy dishwater. As his hands surfaced from the water, Ben blinked again, and could only think, '_Oh.'_

His hands were covered in rather deep cuts, some of which still had pieces of glass embedded in them. Blood immediately began to pour from the cuts, pooling into his palms and running off of his hands into the dishwater. He must have used too much force and broken one of the glasses. He hadn't even noticed the bubbles on the water's surface turning pink.

"Oh, honey," his mother said, grabbing one of the cleaner dish towels and gently wrapping it around his hand, being careful not to aggravate the cuts that still had glass in it. "Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Carl," his mother called over her shoulder. "Some of these look like they might need stitches. We should take him to the hospital."

"I'll see our guest out and you get Ben ready to go," his father said before leading said 'guest' out in the direction of the front door.

Another towel was wrapped around his hands along with the first and a jacket was draped over his shoulders. It wasn't long before they were ready to go, heading out the door to drive to the hospital.

Though their emotions were running wild, his parents remained calm throughout the whole thing, but then, that wasn't too surprising considering how many times he'd accidentally hurt himself over the span of the rest of the summer. He gave the term 'accident-prone' a whole new meaning. His past injuries had always been very minor though and this would be the first one that called for a hospital visit.

Still, Ben supposed that his parents were used to it at this point, though he did give them some credit for staying calm even when faced with a hospital visit.

.

* * *

.

Though it honestly wasn't his intention, he was clearly freaking out the nurse who was stitching up his hands. He'd explained to her already that he had that condition where you can't feel any pain, but she still seemed unsettled over the fact that he didn't even flinch as she stitched his hands up, and with no anesthetic either (which would have been a pointless expense for him when you think about it). More than likely though, what probably unnerved the nurse was the fact that the moment his parents stepped out of the hospital room, he dropped all traces of emotion. That was bound to throw anyone off.

He knew that he should be keeping the act up around _everyone,_ especially the general public, but he seriously just didn't feel like it. Really, what would be the harm in freaking out one nurse? Wasn't there some sort of confidentiality thing that would prevent the nurse from talking about her patients, or did that only apply to doctors?

Whatever, he really didn't care either way.

"You can go now, Mr. Tennyson" the nurse said upon finishing with the bandages that covered the stitches. She gave him an odd look. "Your parents should be in the waiting room outside."

"Thank you," he said dully before taking his leave. Creeped out or not, the nurse was nice enough to open the door for him.

As he made his way down the hall to where he remembered the waiting room to be, he slowly slid the mask of normalcy back into place. He let his eyes droop and slouched his shoulders because any kid would be tired after the sort of night he just had. He didn't bother with smiling since nobody was really all that happy to be visiting a hospital, as was evident by the colors of most of the people around him.

He didn't have to walk too far before his father met him half-way, saying, "Ah, Ben, I was just coming to check up on you."

"The nurse said I'm all set," Ben said, holding up his bandaged hands as proof.

His father nodded before saying, "Yes, we just finished up all the paperwork. Talked to you doctor too and got the care instructions for your hands for the next week or so."

"Can we go home now?" Ben asked in an exhausted tone-of-voice, adding for good measure, "I'm tired."

"Sure," his father said kindly, resting a hand that Ben couldn't feel on his shoulder.

The old Ben would've appreciated the sentiment.

The drive back home was for the most-part in silence, though Ben couldn't tell if it was an uncomfortable silence or not. He studied his parents' colors, noting the blue and purple shades of concern, as well as the occasional flicker of other emotions that people always seemed to have when they're thinking about something.

Then his father broke the silence when he said, "I didn't say anything before because we were a little busy with the hospital situation, but Mr. Lopes told me as he was leaving that he wouldn't be able to come back for another visit."

Mr. Lopes... their spiritual/magical expert of that night?

"Said something about giving it more thought and realizing that there wasn't anything more that he could do to help," his father explained.

"Oh, that's too bad," his mother said, sounding both confused and a little disappointed. "I really thought we might be getting somewhere."

He should be happy by this turn of events, but of course he wasn't. Still, at least something went right that evening.

.

* * *

.

"So wait," Gwen said, a look of disbelief on her face. "This voodoo guy did something that _actually worked?"_

She almost looked offended, as if the 'voodoo guy' (as she put it) had insulted her magical talents.

At first, Ben hadn't even been planning on telling her about the incident, but then he figured that he was keeping enough from her and Kevin, what with the whole seeing colors and emotions thing. Gwen probably knew more on the subject of magic than that Lopes guy anyway, so not only could this give her a lead in the whole 'fixing him' thing, Ben also knew that Gwen would never purposely hurt him and would practice more restraint when it came to testing anything on him. So the next chance he got to talk to her and Kevin during a Mr. Smoothie run, he brought the event up.

"I wouldn't say it worked," Ben said offhandedly. "Nothing's actually changed. I'm still in the same condition as before."

"But you said you _felt_ something," Gwen pointed out.

"Yes," he said with a displeased tone of voice. "It was very unpleasant."

"Unpleasant how?" Kevin asked, speaking up after having stayed quiet for the most part.

_'The most excruciating thing I had ever felt.'_

"It was painful," he said, eyes narrowed down at his smoothie resting on the table in front of him. "Very much so. I'd rather not have to experience it again."

"Ben," Gwen said, resting a hand on his shoulder, trying to be the voice of reason. "This could be a step in the right direction. If we can figure out what this guy did, it might help us find some alternative way to help you, or it could at least give us a bit more information about what's going on with you."

"Well, you'll have to ask my mom if you want any information," Ben said. "I wasn't really paying attention to what the guy was..."

Grey... Far in the distance, walking out of the Mr. Smoothie parking lot with their back to Ben, was a guy whose colors were simply just... grey. That was it. No other color at all, just a dark grey. At first, Ben wondered if the color was actually some form of blue, but no, it was definitely grey.

He had never seen grey before for an emotion. He wondered what it could possibly represent.

"Ben?" Gwen called, drawing his attention back to the conversation they had been having.

"What?" he asked dully, still keeping his eyes on retreating figure who was enveloped in only grey.

"You okay, Tennyson?"

"I'm fine," he said automatically, tonelessly.

Whoever the person was, they disappeared from sight. Ben turned his full attention back to Kevin and Gwen who were both giving him odd looks.

"What?" he asked again, slipping back into monotone, his face expressionless.

"Nothing... aside from you going all ADD zombie on us again," Kevin said with a raised eyebrow, his tone a little amused.

"Remember Ben, sincerity," Gwen was quick to correct him.

Ben grabbed his smoothie to take a long sip, being careful of his stitches only because he'd rather not tear them and then have to pay another visit to the hospital. When he set the smoothie down, the automatic smile slipped into place, and he acted sheepish for their benefit, as if to say, 'Whoops, my mistake.'

Yet on the inside he was thinking, '_You guys didn't seem to have a problem with how I had been before we told Grandpa what happened.'_

He was sure the old Ben would be disgruntled enough by the whole thing for both their sakes.

.

* * *

.

"_Be nice to our guest, Ben."_

Smile. Be courteous, be sincere, be normal. Just the same sort of thing over and over again.

It was a couple days later, while he was sitting alone in the park after having just escaped yet another encounter with an unwanted guest and their 'alternative healing techniques,' when he again spotted a figure far in the distance who only radiated grey-colored lights. He couldn't be sure if it was the same person as before since he hadn't actually gotten a good look at the guy, and then there was the fact that this person was too far away to pick out any distinguishable features. Who the person was didn't matter though, it was only the color and the emotion that interested him.

He knew he should be heading back home. The sun was beginning to set and his parents probably wouldn't want him out past dark by himself, especially now that he didn't have the omnitrix to rely on. The grey color though, it was just too... intriguing, and this would be the perfect opportunity to better observe it.

He got to his feet, watching the person move further and further away. The person moved with purpose in their steps. Clearly they had a destination in mind. Most people were aimless if they had just come out to the park for a stroll.

'_No harm in following from a distance,' _he decided, before walking in the person's wake.

As he walked closer, he was able to tell that the person was a guy who actually didn't look to be all that much older than Ben, but then he was still a little too far away to see anything else, so who knows. Ben realized he would need to get closer if he were to have any chance of actually seeing any sort of physical display as to what the grey emotion might be. Of course, he didn't want to get too close and draw the guy's attention.

With a calculating eye, Ben watched as the colors of anger quickly flashed through the grey before fading away to just grey once more. The same thing happened again, but this time with a flash of fear before the grey consumed the colors again. Following that, there was a very faint tinge of anger, then a tinge of sadness, before it all fell back to that dark grey color.

It was very odd, but also interesting, and Ben picked up his pace to get a bit closer to the guy.

Then the guy walked into the thicket of trees that surrounded half the park and Ben stopped. If the guy had seen him and questioned him, Ben could have easily explained that he was simply walking around the park and just-so-happened to cross the man's path. Following the man into the woodsy area that separated the park from the small pond though would be a little bit harder to explain.

The pond in question wasn't exactly a high foot-traffic area. There weren't any benches around it for people to sit at, the pond frequently flooded from the rain and covered up the path surrounding it, nobody ever went swimming in it because it was usually always covered in a layer of algae and there had been rumors floating around for as long as Ben could remember saying that a sewage pipe ran directly into the small body of water.

'_I could always just say that I was going to see if any ducks had come back,'_ he thought, remembering the complaints he had heard from people in the past about how the ducks had flown away from the pond and never returned. He recalled a time back before he entered his teen years when there had been a protest calling for the pond to be cleaned up. Nothing had ever come from it though.

'_And if there's really an issue, I can always give him the 'it's a free country' speech.'_

His decision made, Ben entered the woodsy area, winding around trees and scanning his surroundings for the one with the grey lights. It wasn't too long before he reached the pond which it would seem had flooded again, covering over any real path that he could follow with water. He spent several minutes walking along the pond's edge, traipsing through underbrush and passing around trees, when a sudden splashing noise caught his attention.

Not too far in the distance, he saw the guy with the grey lights sending water flying as he raced out of the pond and bolted back into the woods. As odd as that was, Ben knew there was no way he could follow the guy now. After all, there was no discrete way of chasing after someone.

"Oh well," he concluded dully.

It wasn't as if he could be disappointed or anything. At least the entire thing had been something to do as he held off on going home. As the bright orange light of the sunset reflected off of the water, Ben decided that he should probably be getting home anyways, so he turned to leave.

But then he saw something out of the corner of his eye, something floating in the water where the guy with the grey lights had been. Perhaps a water-logged branch or bundle of leaves that had been disturbed by the guy sloshing around in the dirty water beforehand?

'_Interesting how I can still at least be a little curious despite not having emotions.'_

Really though, why would anyone willingly go into this unsanitary pond? Perhaps the guy had accidentally dropped something in the water, or maybe the guy thought he saw something and went to check it out in the same way that Ben was now walking around the pond to check out what that floating thing was? The guy sure left in a hurry. Maybe the floating thing was a snapping turtle or an alligator. If it _was_ an alligator, it would probably be a good idea to let Animal Control know.

'_Maybe it's an alien,' _Ben thought.

That would certainly explain the guy suddenly bolting, and aliens had turned up in weirder places than a pond. Ben recalled the time they had to deal with an alien problem at a minigolf course. If it was an alien, this would be his first alien encounter since the last one that had consequently killed him.

He couldn't say that he was disappointed, but it was kind of anticlimactic when he reached the area in question and saw that the floating thing was just a black garbage bag. It was no wonder that the pond was so dirty if people were doing stuff like dumping their garbage in it. The guy with the grey lights hadn't been carrying anything, so Ben supposed the blame for this bit of pollution fell on someone else's head.

"Why the exaggerated reaction though?" Ben wondered quietly to himself.

It was that question that stopped Ben from simply turning around and heading back home. So the guy found some garbage, so what? It wasn't anything that should be sending someone running in the opposite direction. Pollution was bad, but it didn't merit that sort of reaction from even the most sensitive of people.

Narrowing his eyes at the floating garbage bag, Ben trudged into the water, finding it kind of ridiculous that he was wasting a good pair of shoes on this. He had considered taking off his shoes, but with his luck, he'd step on a piece of broken glass. He could at least appreciate the fact that he couldn't _feel_ the slimy, algae coated water.

'_For the sake of what's left of my pride, this better be some mind-blowing garbage,' _he thought dully.

The water came up past his knees by the time he was close enough to the black garbage bag to be able to grab it and pull it closer. It would seem that the bag had already been torn into, probably by the guy with the grey colors, so at least Ben wouldn't have to tear into plastic and whatever other substance was inside with his stitched up hands.

Garbage juice? Dead birds? Used hospital supplies? His mind came up with several different scenarios, and he handled the bag with care at the thought of used needles.

"I'm probably going to regret this," he said dully just before pulling open the previously torn hole in the bag.

And he would of course have to be right. Of all the different scenarios that had flashed through his mind, this hadn't been one of them.

Severed human body parts.

He supposed that he was more optimistic than he thought for not having first guessed this as a possibility.

_'Got nothing to smile about now.'_

_.  
_

* * *

_That's all for now. Man, this was a hard chapter to write. u.u; My inner critic kept questioning each thing that happened, making me contemplate just cutting some stuff out completely. _

_Hopefully you're all still enjoying things though, and hopefully I'm not disturbing you too much. As for all the rituals Ben's parents are having done, it's all safe peaceful stuff like meditation and relying on more natural forms of healing. So really, it's nothing harmful, or at least, none of it's meant to be harmful. It's not like they're doing satanic rituals or anything. _

_Review please and tell me what you think!_


	6. Chapter 6

_Hey all. I finally have another update for you guys. So anyway, I've been using the word 'omnitrix' when I should have been using the word 'ultimatrix' since this all takes place after Ultimate Alien. I was going to go back and change it, but then I figured: fuck that, the story's already practically AU as it is, and Ben will never be using the alien's ultimate forms anyway. I guess, just pretend that Azmuth made a new omnitrix since the ultimatrix had never been part of his plans in the first place. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10. Don't sue me, I'm poor._

_

* * *

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_

**Chapter Six**

An odd sort of silence that bordered on uncomfortable permeated the car as they drove away from the police station. Well, it wasn't uncomfortable for _him, _but Ben could tell from the hunch of Kevin's shoulders and from his wildly fluctuating colors that the other boy was at least a little off-put by this current turn of events. Kevin seemed to be struggling to decided on exactly what sort of emotion he should be feeling at the moment, so Ben just left him to it and directed his attention to the scenery passing by just outside the car windows. It was fairly late into the night now, and seeing as how Ben had yet to contact his parents that night, he had a feeling that they wouldn't be too happy with him when he did finally get back home.

"So," Kevin began, and Ben looked back over at the other boy to see that he had settled with being concerned for the moment. "Are you okay?"

Ben blinked, and for a moment, he didn't say anything, just stared at Kevin because what kind of stupid question was that? _'Are you okay' _was the sort of thing you'd ask someone who actually had any emotions that could be upset by some traumatic event in the first place.

"I wasn't physically injured by what happened, if that's what you mean," Ben finally said in a blunt tone.

They both knew that that wasn't what Kevin meant though.

"Right, sorry," Kevin said. "Just an automatic response."

"I guess the next thing you'll be telling me is that I should actually act like I'm disturbed over finding a dead body. Keep up appearances and all that?" Ben said, and then backtracked for a moment. That came out sounding accusingly without him even meaning it to.

Kevin tossed a peculiar glance in his direction, raising an eyebrow as he said, "Uh, no. I wasn't going to say that at all."

"Oh, well... good," Ben said slowly, slouching down in his seat. "Cause I did enough of that back at the police station. I should get an award for _that_ performance."

Kevin gave an amused hum, lips pulling up into a small smile, "Sorry I missed it then." Dark eyes again looked over in Ben's direction. "I have to admit, I was a bit thrown off by your call at first."

"_Hey Kevin, come pick me up? I'm at the police station... Uh... I found a dead body."_

"You sounded so upset," Kevin said, voice growing a little quiet.

"Well, I couldn't exactly drop the act right then," Ben explained simply. "There were police officers watching me make the call."

"Why _did _you call me anyway?" Kevin asked curiously. "Why not call your parents? It's not like you did anything wrong."

Ben had watched enough movies and TV shows to know that usually in a scene like this, when someone makes the statement that '_you didn't do it' – _or in Kevin's case, didn't do '_anything wrong' – _the person that made that statement would then take the time to give the other person a _look_ as if to ask, '_Did you do it?' _

Kevin did no such thing, and his statement that Ben didn't do anything wrong sounded completely genuine. Ben stared at the other teen, not really sure what he should think about that, not really sure what one would normally be _feeling _in these circumstances. He guessed that he... _appreciated_ the sentiment. It was... er... _nice, _wasn't it, that there was no doubt in Kevin's mind about Ben's innocence?

Ben adverted his eyes, looking back out the car window.

"I guess I was just holding off having to tell them," Ben finally explained. "I don't even want to tell them at all. They'll just freak out, get even more over-protective."

Which would make his home-life even more of an inconvenient hassle.

"I'll _have _to tell them though. They'd find out eventually, especially if the police come by to ask more questions," Ben concluded.

"Didn't the police get everything in your statement?" Kevin asked, a little confused.

Another silence descended over the car. This one was more brief than the last though as Ben concluded that he might as well just come out and say it.

"I'm pretty sure I'm a suspect," he said, glancing over to see what Kevin's reaction would be.

Kevin briefly laughed, sounding baffled, and then a moment later it hit him that Ben wasn't joking. Eyes widening in disbelief, he said, "Wait, what? They seriously think you have something to do with this?"

"You didn't see the body, Kevin, it was all chopped up into pieces," Ben said, and Kevin paled at the comment. "In their eyes, it's something I'm clearly capable of with the omnitrix."

And then for him to be the one to find the body and call the murder in... He was sure the method had been used before; throw the suspicion off of yourself by being the one to report the murder, because why would a killer lead the police right to their own kill? The thought had probably crossed the mind of at least one of the officers. Plus there was the fact that his fingerprints were all over the garbage bag.

"The omnitrix isn't even working," Kevin pointed out heatedly.

"The police don't know that," Ben said.

"That doesn't even matter," Kevin said, frustrated. "You've saved the world enough times, the police should know you'd never do something like that."

"No need to get all pissed off about it just yet," Ben said.

Was he smiling? It seemed like Kevin getting all defensive for his sake deserved a smile.

"They didn't exactly come right out and accuse me just yet," Ben went on to explain. "They just sort of implied that they were thinking about it as a possibility."

One of them did, at least. The other officer who'd been in the room while he gave his statement had been all smiles and had a 'gentle, understanding' vibe about him. They'd had the whole good cop/bad cop thing down. Giving a statement had sure felt a little like being interrogated though, and he'd wondered at the time if some of his rights were being violated, but then, he didn't really care either way on the matter. Still, it might be helpful to read up a little bit on Bellwood's laws.

"_And don't go disappearing off on any 'special alien missions' anytime soon,"_ the designated 'bad cop' had said.

Which was a weird equivalent to saying 'don't leave town.'

So yeah, he was definitely a suspect, but there was really no need to worry – even if he _could_ worry – because he didn't do anything, and he was sure that some evidence would come up eventually that would clear any of the police's doubts about him once the crime scene was looked over more.

"If they try for one second to throw you in jail, we're hopping the next ship off this planet," Kevin muttered.

Worst comes to worst, if he ever needed a backup plan, there was always Kevin to rely on.

"Thanks Kev," he said, the grateful tone easy to come by when compared to all the other times he had to fake an emotion. "I can always count on you."

.

* * *

.

It was a story he'd had to tell a couple of times now. To the police, to his parents, to Kevin and Gwen, and then to his grandpa. It was a good thing his eye didn't twitch anymore when he lied because he'd been doing a lot of lying lately and his story would have surely fallen apart by now if people knew that he was fibbing about some of what happened during the whole event leading up to him finding the body.

It wasn't a hug lie, so it wasn't really that big of a deal. He just wasn't telling them the real reason why he had followed the guy that led him to the body in the first place. He couldn't exactly come out and say that he had followed the guy because his colors were grey, which was a color he had never seen before when it came to other's emotions.

Instead he told everyone that he had followed the guy because he had been acting suspicious. It was a simple enough excuse. It wasn't uncommon for someone's curiosity to get the best of them and have them following after something. Even without his emotions, he could still be curious about some things, so it was an entirely possible explanation.

Kevin of course had thought it was a pretty stupid move on his part to go chasing after someone who was acting suspicious, especially when he didn't have the omnitrix working to help himself. Both his cousin and his parents had been disapproving after he told his story and they had all lectured him on how reckless he had been and how he needed to be more careful. His grandfather on the other hand, well, there'd been no outward reaction to his story...

On the inside though, displayed in the older man's colors, had been that lingering hint of fear and along with that were the colors of an emotion that Ben hadn't seen too much of before. Doubt, skepticism, suspicion, distrust. Call it what you will, it was a rusty red color with black and a dark green tinge to it. It'd taken him a little bit of time to figure that particular emotion out, but once he did, it was hard to mistake it from any other emotion, and it was one that he was seeing more and more frequently on his grandpa.

'_Why the distrust?' _He would wonder on more than one occasion. '_Is it because you know I'm lying, or do you just not trust me in general?' _

And along with those questions, the original question of '_What are you afraid of?' _soon turned into _'Am I the one you're afraid of?'_

His grandfather's sudden distrust in him was one of the big reasons he had yet to tell anyone about his 'color vision' when it came to people's emotions, even now that he knew what it was that he was seeing. Ben really didn't have too good of an idea as to how everyone would act if they knew he could read their emotional state like a picture book, but he didn't think it would help the situation all that much since emotions were such a personal thing. His friends and family already seemed uncomfortable enough around him without adding _that_ little bit of knowledge in to the situation.

And with this whole murder investigation going on in Bellwood along with his parents spending their time going over things with a lawyer (just in case), well, everyone already had enough to deal with. The old Ben would probably appreciate him not adding anymore stress to everyone's lives.

'_Or maybe the old Ben would be accusing me of making up excuses.'_

Did that even really count in his case though? Usually when someone makes up excuses, it's because of some sort of emotional reason. Then again... it was possible to not want to do something due to a perfectly logical reason that had nothing to do with emotions.

"So do you think he did it? The guy you followed?" Gwen asked.

Some time had passed since the day that Kevin had first picked him up from the police station. School had just recently ended for the day and the three of them were hanging out at Ben's house, sitting in his living room and flipping through the TV channels in search of something good to watch. After everything that had been going on lately – what with school, the research Gwen was doing, the Plumber missions Gwen and Kevin were going on, and then the murder investigation and Ben's condition hanging over their heads – they were having some well-deserved downtime.

"I dunno, it's possible," Ben said in answer to her question, throwing her a sideways glance from his slouched position on the couch, his feet up on the coffee table.

"Of course the guy did it," Kevin said, as if the answer was obvious. "How else would he know right where the body was? And then to run off like that when Ben spotted him? Clearly he was interrupted before he could stash the body back in the water."

'_But the bag was torn open. Unless he had another bag on hand, there would be no easy way to put the body back,' _Ben mused, while out-loud he asked, "Why would the guy go back and risk getting caught like that if he did it?"

"Maybe he got some kind of thrill out of seeing what he did," Kevin said with a shrug. "Honestly, who knows. The guy's probably crazy, and you can't reason with crazy people." He said this with kind of a distant look in his eyes, clearly remembering his own past battles with insanity.

"Maybe the guy just found the bag, by accident, and then panicked when he heard someone coming," Gwen pointed out reasonably. "For all he knew, you could've been the killer coming back to the crime scene, Ben"

"Then why didn't he report what he found to the police?" Kevin asked with a raised eyebrow.

"He could have been too afraid to," Gwen suggested.

"_I_ reported the crime, and look where that got me," Ben said. "If that guy isn't the killer, then he's the smarter one out of the two of us."

Kevin frowned but said nothing and turned his attention more fully on finding a TV channel to stay on. There was the slightest hint of anger in his colors, but Ben believed it was safe to assume that that anger was towards the Bellwood police station and not towards him.

Gwen on the other hand had the colors of concern about her and was quick to assure him, "You did the right thing. Okay? Everything's going to work out just fine."

"I'm not worried," he insisted with a mental sigh, wondering why she was wasting her breath trying to make him 'feel better.' Maybe she was doing it to satisfy her own worried state-of-mind, or maybe it was like Kevin had said a couple days before, that it was a 'force of habit.'

"Unfortunately, it looks like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better," Kevin suddenly said in a grim tone.

The two cousins looked over at the Osmosian to see him staring at the TV screen. Following his line of sight, they saw that he had stopped on a channel that was currently displaying the news, and it would seem that their top story of the night was '_Ben Tennyson Involved in Local Murder Investigation.'_

Staring at the camera quiet seriously, the news anchor said, "Is it just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or has this teen hero gone bad? Stay tuned for what we've learned so far on this developing story."

Well doesn't that just figure, and what do you even say in a situation like this?

"Still not worried," he finally announced, breaking the silence that had fallen over the three of them, before he continued a little dryly, "But this does suck."

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* * *

_So that's all for this chapter. Kind of short (sorry), so hopefully the next one will be longer. _

_I just want to point out that Grandpa Max _wants_ to trust Ben, but it's kind of hard for him to look past what happened the last time someone he knew resurrected the dead, and Ben's current condition certainly isn't helping situations either. _

_Just a note, I might be upping the rating on this story to 'M' soon, what with this whole murder plot being introduced. Does anyone think the story should already be rated 'M'?_

_Hope everyone's still enjoying things! Review please and tell me what you think!_


	7. Chapter 7

_Oh my god song, get out of my head, you're distracting meeeee! D: _

_Another update for everyone, and longer than the last one. [quietly hums song] Sonova-_

_Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10, don't sue me. _

_

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**Chapter Seven**

Ben didn't even need to see their colors to know that his parents were furious. They were usually pretty easy-going people, but right now, well, he'd be a little afraid if he could be. He'd never seen them this mad before, not even the first time he'd become the center of the media's attention (though to be fair, back then the media had just been accusing him of being a menace due to property damage and _not_ murder). Even the few times they'd come to his defense against alien attackers, it hadn't been with this much anger (rather, it'd been with a sort of righteous glee that said, '_Honey, could you pass me that laser gun so that I can kick this alien's butt?' _).

At least it wasn't him they were mad at. It was whoever leaked the story to the press and decided to paint him out as being the bad guy, the one who was most likely responsible for the murder despite the fact that there was no concrete evidence against him. Since they didn't know who that was though, they decided to take it out on the next person in line who they felt should have been responsible for keeping things from getting out of hand the way they currently were.

That unfortunate person happened to be the Chief of Police.

Ben sat in an office chair with his parents on either side of him, watching as his parents argued and yelled while the Chief of Police tried to talk them down from their anger and regain control of the conversation. He wondered if it was really necessary for him to be here for this since he wasn't actually doing any of the talking, but he had a feeling that it wouldn't exactly be smart to interrupt his parents' current tirade, so he kept his mouth shut.

Kevin would probably get a real kick out of this. Ben was pretty sure he had seen the other boy smiling as his parents had dragged him out of the house while snapping about '_having a little chat with whoever's in charge down at the station.' _

"Mr. And Mrs. Tennyson," the Police Chief said. It was clear that the woman's patience was wearing thin. "Let me assure you that this matter is being looked into. Whoever is responsible for this leak of information will be dealt with accordingly, _if_ it is in fact someone at my station who is responsible."

"That's all well and good," his father said, sounding as if it were anything but. "Except the information's already out there and my son's name is being slandered."

"What exactly are you going to do to fix that?" his mother asked, and it was clear that she expected the Chief to do _something._

"An official statement is being written up to give to the press," the Police Chief said. "We'll explain what we can and it should clear things up. Again, I'm very sorry that this happened."

It was a nice sentiment and though his parents weren't completely satisfied, they decided to let the matter rest, at least until the police's official statement was given. The fact of the matter though was that the police still hadn't completely eliminated him as a suspect. He had no idea what sort of evidence was being collected on the case, but clearly there wasn't anything yet that was concrete enough to clear his name, and when the official statement went out this was all subtly suggested. They didn't outright accuse him, they didn't say that he was in any way responsible, yet they didn't completely discount him as a potential suspect.

In a way, it had been one of those 'innocent until proven guilty' speeches, even though the words 'innocent' and 'guilty' had never actually been used. Needless to say, his parents weren't impressed.

"I'm calling the lawyer," was the first thing his mother said after seeing the police's official press release.

At this point though, it didn't really matter what his parents did, if they got the police to make a second statement revoking the first. The damage had already been done and the seeds of doubt had been planted in the minds of those around him. He could tell that they were all wondering if he really was a murderous force to be worried about, and no second statement from the police would ever completely wipe that thought from their minds, the realization that with the omnitrix, he could easily kill them all.

The color of fear was everywhere, and they were all afraid of him.

The only thing that could really help him now was having the real killer brought to justice, and since this was such a normal human crime, that was all up to the police to do. Even if the murder had been due to an alien attack, he'd still be left out of the action with the rest of the Plumbers. The only thing he could really do now was sit and wait and continue on with his life, what was left of it.

Things had just barely been getting back to normal with him and the media's attention too. The hype had finally died down and – prior to his death – he'd been able to relax and not be mobbed by fans and the press at every turn. He remembered enjoying it, enjoying the normalcy, because as much as he had basked in the attention at first, the novelty had eventually worn off, making him realize just how stuck he was in his situation. He'd actually been thankful when people had started to lose interest in him and focused on more current events.

And now it was starting all over again, except this time it was worse. Rather than just have Will Harangue be against him, it seemed like the majority of the public was against him as well. There were no fans walking up to him on the streets this time, in fact, there were very few fans at all, and the ones who did claim to be on his side did it from the anonymous safety of the internet.

He considered himself lucky that he didn't have any feelings to get hurt by this; by the whispering, and the not-so-subtle staring, and the continuous stream of reports and stories on the television. Of course, if his death had never happened and he'd been been his normal self, he probably never would have found the body in the first place and none of this ever would have happened.

Still, all details aside, his emotionless state was a good thing. He couldn't be emotionally hurt by the public turning against him, he couldn't be sad or angry by the betrayal.

It was... a little distracting though... for reasons that he couldn't quite understand. If he wasn't bothered by it – and he _wasn't,_ it was impossible for him to be – then why couldn't he just push it all from his mind and ignore it? Why did he keep thinking about it?

He sat at his assigned seat in his math class, staring down at the three-page math test that rested on the desk before him. He was all too aware of the glances his classmates kept throwing him, of the way his teacher kept a nervous eye on him throughout the entirety of class, as if he would 'go alien' right then and there and go on a murderous rampage.

If he were to categorize things based on how bothered he would've been had he been his normal self, he would have to say that going to school was right up there at the top of the list as being the worst. Everyone either seemed to be afraid of him or was just generally uncomfortable around him, even some of the teachers. They all kept staring at him, like he was some dangerous predator that had been set loose in the school and they were all on the newest episode of '_When Animals Attack.'_

_Look, a tiger! Who let that in here? Oh, but keep your distance. Don't look it in the eye, they take that as a challenge. _

'_It's a shock they even let me continue attending school,' _he thought dully.

He supposed that as long as the murder accusations remained rumors, and as long as he didn't actually hurt anyone at the school, his status as a student was safe. The teachers and the school staff were all keeping an eye on him though, most likely waiting for him to slip-up so that they could suspend or expel him.

He briefly tapped his pencil against his desk, but the slight flinch it drew from the student sitting across from him made him stop. Ben breathed out quietly, turning his focus more on the math problem he needed to solve.

'_This is simple,' _he thought. _'I should know this. I've been studying this, I've been doing all the homework for once.'_

But all the glances cast his way, and the teacher's nervous staring along with that...

He wasn't even bothered. He didn't _feel_ bothered. He didn't _feel_ anything. So then why...?

Keeping his gaze locked on the numbers, he ordered his mind to ignore all outside distractions, to ignore everything else. Just concentrate on the math problem because he should know how to do this. He had been solving the same sort of problems just a couple nights ago.

His mind drew a blank. He couldn't remember what the first step was toward finding the answer. And the teacher kept staring, and his classmates kept looking over at him.

He skipped the problem and moved on to the next, which happened to be a word problem.

'_It takes pump 'A' two hours less time than pump 'B' to empty a swimming pool. Pump 'A' is started at eight a.m. and pump 'B' is started at...' _the word problem fizzled out to white noise in his head as the memory of that morning's news discussion on the TV echoed throughout his mind.

"_So Ben Tennyson. Guilty or not guilty?"_

'_-Pump 'B' is started at ten a.m.' _he thought, his mental voice speaking louder._ 'At twelve p.m. the pool is-'_

"_Do you think the police will even be able to arrest him when he has that watch of his?"_

_'-the pool is sixty percent empty when pump 'B' broke down.. which was at twelve p.m.' _he thought. '_How much time after-'_

"_I think the _real _story here is that this kid has way too much power and we have no way of stopping him."_

_'How much time after twelve p.m. would it take pump 'A' to empty the pool,' _he thought, and then after a pause that was just filled with question marks in his head, he thought, '_Wait, what? Have the pumps both been running at the same time?'_

Ben rubbed a palm against one eye.

"_You'd think the government or the military would have some kind of back-up plan..."_

"_The police are still looking into the identity of the body, and divers are being sent into the lake to search for more evidence..."_

_'What is this problem even asking again?' _Ben wondered. He looked up at the clock, noting that the class was almost over and he still had a lot of math problems left to answer.

"_The smartest thing at this point would be to keep your distance from Tennyson."_

In the end, he guessed on the answers to the rest of the problems. He wrote down random numbers or answers and he circled random letters for the multiple choice questions. He was bad with math anyway, so what did it even matter what answers he put down? He'd probably end up with the same score either way.

Before he knew it, the bell rang and he was off to lunch where there wasn't assigned seating and therefore no one was forced to sit next to him, so nobody did. It was just him at an empty table with a wide gap of empty space around him.

It worked out in his favor, he guessed, since he didn't have to put on a mask of emotion for anyone and could simply focus on drinking his soup. It was a bit of an an eye-opener too. He hadn't fully realized until now just how much he had drifted apart from his school friends since putting the omnitrix back on.

Oh well. Such is the life of the vigilante/hero, especially when everyone thinks you might actually be the villain.

Soon the bell rang again and he headed off to his next class, science. Everyone gave him a wide berth in the hallways, which actually turned out to be a good thing since it made traveling between classes infinitely easier now that he didn't have to fight through a crowd, and he reached the science room in record time. Before he could take his seat though, he was called up to the front of the room where the teacher was busy writing notes down on the white board.

Mr. Miller. The man been his science teacher for the past two years now, and he was one of the few teachers who didn't seem to care all that much about Ben's current reputation as a potential killer, but that was mostly because Mr. Miller didn't seem to care all that much about anything, at least not on the outside, and not when it came to the personal lives of his students. The man experienced emotions just like any other normal person would, but none of that really came to the surface.

"Mr. Tennyson," Mr. Miller said blandly. "You're wanted in the guidance counselor's office. Be sure to get the class notes from one of your fellow students later."

Not bothering to tell the man that it would be unlikely for him to find someone willing to share the class notes with him, he headed back out the door and off in the direction of the guidance counselor's office. He didn't know exactly why they wanted to see him, but he had a feeling it was most likely due to the whole murder thing, and who knows which direction that could go in.

The receptionist eyed him warily as he walked in, and there it was, the pale yellows of fear mixed in with the colors of doubt. He was saved from having to approach her though when one of the counselors, likely the one that called him there, called him into her office. He made note of her name which was posted on the office door. Mrs. Lynn Davis.

Standing in the office doorway, he watched as the colors of calmness and happiness shone brightly around her, and then her eyes met his and the colors of concern became more prominent, though the smile never left her face.

"Take a seat, Mr. Tennyson," she said, gesturing at the chair next to her desk.

Deciding that it was at least a good thing that she wasn't afraid of him or suspicious of him like so many others, he dropped his backpack down next to the chair and took a seat. He wondered what type of emotions he should be displaying at the moment. He didn't exactly have anything to be happy about, so it wouldn't make sense to smile and be cheerful. At the same time, being outwardly angry wouldn't really work in his favor.

In the end, he said nothing, sticking to his default blankness, and waited for her to speak up and lead the conversation in whatever emotional direction she expected it to go.

"For the record," Mrs. Davis said, starting off. "I don't think you're guilty."

He already kind of figured that out based on her colors, but for her benefit, he said in a surprised tone, "Oh." and then finished up with a grateful, "Thank you."

"How have you been feeling lately?" she asked carefully. "What with everything that's been going on?"

"Uh..." he trailed off.

It was a simple question, but not one that he knew the answer to. How was he feeling? He wasn't feeling anything, but he knew that wouldn't be a suitable answer. How would he be feeling if he was back to normal, how would the old Ben be feeling? Hurt, angry, betrayed, all of the above? Probably just about every negative emotion you could think of, he'd be feeling.

"Well, you know..." he finally said, being purposely vague, wanting her to draw her own conclusions. "I mean, how am I supposed to feel in a situation like this?"

Really, how should he feel?

He fished for something definitive to say, something that someone would normally say under these circumstances,"With everyone thinking I could do something so horrible and thinking I'm something that I'm not..."

He trailed off again.

Making him into something that he's not, and then there was the people close to him doing the same thing, but in a different way, trying to make him into some_one_ that he's not. That wasn't something he could really go over with her though, but for everything else, somehow saying that 'it sucks' didn't seem to really adequately describe the crummy situation.

"It's what you'd expect it to be," he finally concluded, evasive as ever. Wanting to push her past the subject and get her to focus on something else, he said, "I really don't want to talk about it."

"That's fine," she said, not pressing the issue and letting the conversation stay at the subdued pace he'd unknowingly set.

It kind of made him wonder if 'subdued' was really the right way to go or if he'd picked the wrong tone. Was he coming off as too uncaring or was it more on the end of being quietly sad? Quietly sad could work, but if it was uncaring... Maybe he should have raised his voice or gotten angry about the subject, maybe throw something? But then that could easily backfired as him being 'hostile.'

Subdued was probably the safer route to go.

"There's another reason I called you in here," Mrs. Davis said in a positive way as if to let Ben know that he wasn't in trouble. "And perhaps this would be a good way to get your mind off of current events."

"Oh?" Ben asked, curious tone. "What would that be?"

"Well, Mr. Tennyson, you're graduating this year," she said. "So now would be the time to _really_ think about your plans for after high school."

"I haven't really given it much thought before," he admitted, and that was truth.

He wasn't really one to think too far ahead into the future, and when he ever did, it was always about some sort of major alien problem and what he needed to do to fix it. Even then, he'd usually just deal with things as they happened.

He hadn't once thought about what he wanted to do with his life, what he wanted to do in the future for when he got older. He always kind of felt like he'd forever be doing one alien mission after another, but even in that case, he'd still need to think about an actual occupation. Something to earn an income at, and even if he didn't care about it now, he knew the old Ben wouldn't want to be paid for being a hero. He did that stuff because it was the right thing to do and because he had liked helping people. There had to be something else, some other job he could do, a _real _job that he could apply himself to.

Of course, now because of his 'condition' and because the omnitrix wasn't working, he didn't even know if he had the alien thing to count on as being some sort of future job.

"You have plenty of options, Mr. Tennyson," Mrs. Davis said. "You've really brought your grades up this year, so college shouldn't be a problem if you keep up on that. You could also go to a tech school and learn a valuable trade. Have you thought about any career paths you'd be interested in?"

"Not really," he said.

"What do you enjoy doing?" she asked.

And that was the problem, wasn't it? He didn't enjoy anything right now. Deciding on a career based on what he enjoyed doing would involve remembering all the things he enjoyed doing in the past, and who's to say that his likes and dislikes hadn't changed since then? He was a teenager. It wasn't uncommon for him to go through phases where he liked one thing one day and a different thing the next.

On top of that, just because he enjoyed something, that didn't mean he'd want to do that something for a living. There were plenty of people out there that had hobbies they enjoyed that they'd never want to turn into a job because then it would just take all the fun out of it. How was he supposed to know what was a past enjoyment that he _didn't_ want to make a job and what was something he had enjoyed that he _did_ want to make a job?

This would all have been a hell of a lot easier if he had taken even one moment in the past to think about what he wanted to do with his life.

"I like to help people," he said, because at least he could be sure of that much about himself.

Mrs. Davis smiled, saying encouragingly, "There are plenty of career paths to choose from that involve helping people."

"I haven't given it any specific thought," he said, not really sounding all that encouraged or enthusiastic about the whole thing.

There were too many choices, too many job options. He didn't want to make the wrong one and then later get his emotions back to find out that he _didn't_ want to do... _whatever_ for a living, and on top of that, already be thirty-thousand dollars in debt due to student loans or something else along those lines.

"I'm not saying you have to make a decision today," Mrs. Davis said. "I'm just saying that now is a good time to give it some thought. Consider your options and think about what you want to do."

"But what about the investigation and all this craziness that's going on right now?" He asked, because really, why make any plans for the future if the police eventually decide that he _has_ no future. "A college or a tech school isn't going to want someone like me going there."

Mrs. Davis seemed to disagree, if her colors and the look on her face were anything to go by.

"Don't put your life on hold because of this, Mr. Tennyson," she advised. "Things will eventually clear up and when the 'craziness' dies down, you'll be glad that you've come up with a plan for your future."

He highly doubted he'd be 'glad', but he understood what she was saying.

It was getting to be about time for the bell between classes to ring again and dismiss everyone to go to their last class of the day, and it would also seem that his conversation with Mrs. Davis was drawing to a close. The guidance counselor pulled open one of her desk drawers and sorted through the contents to pull out a couple of booklets and packets of papers.

Some of it was lists and descriptions of different colleges and tech schools, there was a list of helpful websites, some of it was instructions on how to apply to colleges or tech schools and what to expect, and there was also a booklet that had descriptions on various career choices.

"If you do decide to pursue a higher education, come back to talk to me and I'll let you know what the different scholarship opportunities are this year," Mrs. Davis said, sliding the stack of papers and various booklets over to him for him to shove into his backpack to look through later.

The bell for his next class rang and he stood to leave, but as he reached the doorway out, Mrs. Davis called over to him, "Oh, and Mr. Tennyson?"

He threw a curious glance over his shoulder at her.

"If you ever need to talk about anything, know that my door's always open," she said.

He nodded, giving her a smile that hopefully didn't look fake and a quiet thanks before he left for his last class of the day. The unplanned meeting had gone better than he expected it could have gone, though he wouldn't be taking her up on her offer to 'talk.' At least not about anything personal.

Mrs. Davis was right about one thing though. Thinking about what he should do after high school did take his mind off of everything else. At least, it did for the remaining hour of school, all the way up until Kevin came to pick him up and drive him home. That was when everything about the murder investigation came crashing back into his mind.

And it was all due to one thing he just couldn't ignore.

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The last bell of the school day rang and after grabbing what he needed from his locker and putting away what he didn't need, Ben headed out to the front of the school to go meet up with Kevin. For some reason, ever since the start of the murder investigation, the older boy had taken to driving him to and from school when his parents weren't able to. Ben didn't bother to try and understand the possible reasons behind this because before that, he'd had to go back to riding the school bus since he couldn't exactly drive his own car anymore, and between riding the school bus and getting a ride from Kevin, the Osmosian was the better choice.

Tossing his backpack into the back seat, it was as he was climbing into the passenger's side of Kevin's car that he saw it. Grey colors, so easy to spot among all the other colors of the large crowd of his classmates. Just like before though, he couldn't make out any distinguishable features other than the fact that it was a guy who had his back to Ben.

"Kevin," he said, being sure to put an urgency to his tone that drew the older boy's attention to him. "I think I see the guy that I had followed in the park."

"What, where?" Kevin asked, pausing with his hands on the keys in the ignition, his dark eyes looking out the windshield at all of the people that were still milling about.

Just as Kevin asked that, the guy with the grey colors slipped into the passenger's seat of a car up ahead.

"He just got into that black station wagon in front of us," Ben said.

The station wagon was one of the older models with black paint and the usual wood side-paneling, so it was pretty easy to pick out among all the other cars. From the distance they were at, Ben could just barely make out the shadowed form of someone sitting in the driver's seat, and of course he already knew that the guy with grey colors was sitting in the passenger's seat.

"Are you sure it's the same guy?" Kevin asked, squinting at their target car as if that would somehow make it easier for him to see the people sitting inside.

Could he be sure that it was the same guy? Surely there wasn't just one person in the whole world who had the grey-colored emotion, whatever it may be. There were probably plenty of guys out there that had the same short hair and felt the same grey emotion. He couldn't even be sure what the guy in the park's hair color had been.

"No, I'm not sure," he admitted. "I couldn't get a good look then and I couldn't really get a good look now."

And he also still couldn't just tell Kevin the main reason why he thought it might be the same guy. Even if he did explain, in the time that it would take to explain, the station wagon would have likely already driven off.

Kevin frowned, turning the car on. Up ahead, the station wagon slowly pulled away from the curb, yet as it did, Kevin shifted his car into 'drive' and said, "No harm in just following the guy, right?"

Even with all the doubts Kevin _should _be having, he still went out on a limb for Ben. If Ben could appreciate anything at all, he knew he'd really appreciate that.

Putting a small smile on his face, Ben said, "Yeah. Exactly."

So Kevin pulled away from the curb and followed behind the station wagon and Ben figured the older boy must have tailed someone in a car before because he was actually pretty good at making it seem like he wasn't following the other car at all. They followed the car down a couple of side-roads and eventually ended up in a pretty nice, normal looking neighborhood when the station wagon pulled up into one of the house's driveways and drove right into the house's garage.

The garage door closed behind the station wagon, cutting off their sight of it before they could actually see anyone get out of the vehicle. Kevin had parked several houses away when that happened, and for a while they just sat in his car and stared through the back windshield at the house behind them.

"So what now?" Ben asked after a moment of silence.

"Not really much we can do," Kevin said, frowning. "Since you don't know if it's the same guy or not. We wouldn't want to be stirring anything up if it isn't the same guy."

Ben hummed in agreement. Pointing fingers and causing an unnecessary commotion would just put him into even more of a bad light than he already was in.

Before the whole thing could be considered a complete loss though, Kevin reached across him to pull a pen and piece of scrap paper out of the glove compartment, saying, "There's no reason not to write down the address though and look some information up on it later."

It was a long-shot because, really, it wasn't like they'd find the word '_murderer' _stamped next to the name of whoever owned the house. They might get some sort of small clue from it though, so Ben supposed it was worth a look.

Once the address was written down, and with one last glance at the house behind them, Kevin pulled the car gear from 'Park' into 'Drive' and the two left the seemingly innocent neighborhood behind.

.

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_End of chapter. So Chapter Seven got to be so long (9000 words and I still had a lot left to write for it) that I decided to split it into two separate chapters and let you all read this first half while I'm busy working on the second half. _

_Luckily, because of this, the next update shouldn't be too far away because I already have a big chunk of the next chapter all written out. Things are really going to pick up in the next chapter though. So bewaaaaaare! o.o_

_Anyway, review and tell me what you think! :)_


	8. Chapter 8

_Hello yet again everyone. Thank you all for your awesome reviews. :D Man, I suck, I meant to get this finished weeks ago. I feel like I'm cheating on the Ben 10 fandom with Young Justice, lol._

_Here's part two, or rather, chapter eight, where shit actually happens. Hold on to your hats and – what's that? Is that a sharp and pointy object sitting next to you? Why don't I just hold onto that for you right now. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own Ben 10. Don't sue me._

* * *

.

**Chapter Eight**

Taking Ben's dulled sense of taste into consideration, Kevin added a couple extra scoops of hot cocoa mix into the mug of hot water.

They had decided against going to the police about their uneventful adventure of 'Follow that potential murderer's car,' which probably wasn't advisable for someone in their situation, but it was really the best course of action – or in this case, _inaction_ – that they could take since Ben hadn't been all that sure if it had been the same guy he'd followed in the park, and Kevin knew for a fact that it was even more inadvisable to send the police on a wild goose-chase. At the very least though, Kevin would be sure to find out exactly who lived at that house. Maybe knowing that would be a step in the right direction.

Kevin had meant to drive Ben home after that, but he must have been more distracted by the whole thing than he thought because he drove back to his apartment instead. As his car pulled up into the garage connected to his apartment, Kevin had been about to mutter something along the lines of '_Whoops, sorry_,' and then back his car out to drive Ben home, but before he had the chance, Ben was already climbing out of the vehicle – apparently having no problems with this unexpected detour – and heading over to the stairs leading up to Kevin's front door.

Kevin could think of nothing else to do other then follow after the other teen.

So here they were now – no words being exchanged between them after their brief discussion about not going to the cops – with Kevin in his kitchen mixing up some hot cocoa for the brunette teen who was slouched down on the living room couch. Ben's skin was chilled to the touch because it was only thirty degrees outside – nearly winter – and Ben hadn't bothered to wear a jacket or even a long-sleeved shirt that day.

For someone who claimed to be thinking logically, Ben could still be pretty stupid.

Frowning at the sound of the news playing on the television in the background, Kevin headed into the living room with the hot drink in hand. He stopped just behind the couch, his eyes resting on Ben who was sitting slumped over at one end of the couch. Head lying on the armrest, the brunette's attention was completely focused on the TV screen where the news was discussing their top story which was of course about Ben and the murder case.

It was an automatic reaction, moving without thinking, that caused Kevin to reach down with his free hand and rest it on Ben's shoulder. What he'd been attempting to do, he didn't exactly know – maybe it had simply been to get the other boy's attention, maybe he had meant it to be consoling. Whatever the reason, it didn't really matter because the action was completely lost on Ben whose attention was still focused on the television and didn't even know that Kevin's hand was there at all.

It was that fact that brought Kevin's mind back to reality in an '_Oh yeah, right_,' sort-of-way, and even though this had _been _their reality for a couple of months now, it was still disconcerting to him that he could be this close, that he was touching Ben, but because he was out of the other boy's line-of-sight, Ben had no clue.

Which meant that anyone else could do the same, and that didn't sit right with Kevin because that _someone else _could have bad intentions in mind.

He briefly squeezed Ben's shoulder before pulling his hand away and clearing his throat. Dull green eyes glanced up at him and Kevin held out the mug of hot cocoa.

"Here," he said, and needlessly explained, "To warm you up."

Sitting up, Ben's lips pulled up into an awkward, forced smile as he gave a slightly over-enthusiastic thank-you. Compared to how Ben was that first month or so, the brunette really had improved his acting abilities quite a bit. To most people, Ben came off as sounding and acting almost completely normal, but to someone who knew Ben as closely as Kevin did, it was all too clear that there was a difference there, that something was off with most everything that Ben did or said.

Sipping at the hot cocoa, Ben's eyes traveled back over to the TV, and as soon as his green gaze rested on the screen, that fake smile dropped away completely.

Climbing over the back of the couch in favor of simply walking around it, Kevin sat down at the other end of the couch from Ben, his feet up on the cushion between them. He leaned against the armrest and discreetly looked back and forth between the television screen and Ben's face. The brunette's expression was pretty much neutral, and yet despite this, it was like there was something intangible floating about him, something that Kevin struggled to put his finger on.

"_Quite frankly," _someone on the television said,_ "no kid should have a weapon that powerful. That device should be confiscated."_

The negative commentary continued, and though the neutral expression remained, Kevin noticed Ben's shoulders slump just-so-slightly. That's when it occurred to Kevin, a small possibility, but a possibility none-the-less. Although Ben didn't have his emotions – and that was all too clear even without Ben pointing it out to them – maybe there _was_ something going on with the brunette.

What was the word? Subconscious?

Yeah, maybe there was something going on in Ben's subconscious, something buried so deep that Ben didn't even know about it himself, and likely didn't care to know about it. After all, seeing a mutilated body, being suspected of murder, and after having lived the life of a 'hero' for so long, was a pretty fucked up situation.

Plus, from the slump of Ben's shoulders and his posture – add to that the obsessive way he seemed to keep watching the news or any story that was about him – Kevin realized what this reminded him of, emotions or not.

"You're brooding," Kevin said, though it was spoken with a slightly teasing tone, an attempt to lighten the mood he supposed.

At the very least, it was possible that Ben was brooding on a subconscious level... maybe.

"What?" Ben questioned monotonously, clearly caught off guard, and he looked over at Kevin. A small frown forming on his face, Ben tried again, but this time with a confused tone as he repeated, "What?"

"You heard me," Kevin said simply, innocently.

Ben laughed. It was rough and forced. Then he smiled, and that was also forced.

"I'm not brooding," the brunette said, shaking his head.

"You totally are," Kevin insisted. Again, teasingly. "I mean, it's obvious that you are."

"I _can't_ be brooding," Ben reminded him, his tone a weird mix between happy and frustrated. "It's impossible."

Holding his hands up, Kevin said, "No need to get defensive." and then he said with a shrug of his shoulders, "It's not like I'm saying there's anything wrong with brooding. Hell, if anyone deserves to be brooding right now, it's you, but you _clearly_ are brooding."

Ben seemed to be at a loss for words, and so Kevin pressed on, reaching out to the couch cushion between them to snatch up the TV remote as he said, "I don't know if you know this, Ben, but brooding people shouldn't torture themselves with the very thing that's causing them to be brooding in the first place. It's kinda counterintuitive."

"Didn't know you even knew such a big word, Kevin," Ben said snappishly.

Kevin had to laugh despite the insult, "So you're an angry brooder, then?"

All joking aside, he really was serious about the whole 'Ben torturing himself' thing.

"It's not healthy to keep watching this crap," Kevin said, genuinely well-meaning. "It'll get into your head and mess with your mind."

"I'm _fine, _Kevin," Ben stubbornly insisted, taking another drink of his cocoa before setting it down on the end table.

Maybe Ben _was_ fine. Maybe Kevin's mind just couldn't let go of the fact that in a normal situation with a normal Ben, the other boy wouldn't be alright, and now he was projecting what Ben in the past would be like onto Ben of the present, who genuinely _should_ be fine since he had no emotions to be upset by what was going on.

Kevin still stood by what he said earlier about the TV though, and that was why he shut the damn thing off, cutting yet another negative comment about Ben off mid-sentence.

"Wha- Kevin, no," Ben protested, reaching over to try and snatch the remote out of Kevin's hands.

Ben grabbed Kevin's wrist when the older boy tried to hold the remote out of reach, struggling to pull the hand holding the remote closer to him.

"How can I defend myself against what they're saying if I don't _know_ what they're saying about me?" Ben pointed out, pulling at Kevin's wrist with one hand while trying to pry the remote out of his grasp with the other.

Whatever Kevin had been about to say in response to that faded from his mind when he caught sight of Ben's hands and noticed something.

"Have you been biting your nails?" he asked the brunette curiously.

"I – huh?" Ben asked, distracted by the subject change.

The TV remote dropped onto the couch cushion between them, their battle over it forgotten as Kevin grabbed one of Ben's hands and leaned forward for a closer look to find that, yes, his nails had definitely been chewed down. Interestingly enough, Ben stared down at his hands as if this was the first time he was noticing it too.

Kevin frowned, letting go of Ben's hand with a statement of, "That's a really bad habit, you know."

"I didn't even know that I was doing it," Ben said, giving his fingernails a curious look before flexing his fingers in the air and then letting his hand drop to his side.

'_So... what? Just a bad habit, or maybe Ben really _is_ bothered by all of this?_' Kevin wondered.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Ben snatched up the remote and turned the TV back on, and just in time to catch something that was _actually_ news and not just negative commentary or opinion.

"_Two more bodies were found today in the small pond next to Bellwood's park, making that a total of three victims, all of them female._" the news anchor said, "_As of yet, all of their identities remain a mystery, though it can be assumed that they're not from Bellwood as there haven't been any missing person's reports. Divers continue their search for more clues, and possibly even more victims_."

Ben stared at the screen, completely silent, and Kevin struggled to come up with something positive to say to the other boy about this new information. In the end, the only thing he could think of to say was, "Well, it's not like they can pin _three_ murders on you."

It was a weak statement at best, no where near being anything that was even slightly encouraging.

"If they pin even one of those murders on me, I'm pretty well screwed," Ben said.

"No you're not," Kevin said, both adamant and a little exasperated. "I already said before that I'm not letting you get arrested."

And he really meant it. If it came down to it, he would get Ben off Earth, help him go on the run, even break the other boy out of jail if it got that far, because Ben was his best friend and Kevin cared for the other boy, more then a friend _should_ care for another friend, and he'd be damned if he let the brunette take the fall for something like this.

"Thanks Kevin," Ben said, rather insincerely, as he held up the remote and shut the TV off. Standing up from the couch, his thumbs hooking into his pants pockets, he had an evasive look about him as he said, "Think I'm gonna head home."

"Sure, I'll grab my keys," Kevin said, rising from the couch himself, but Ben shaking his head stopped him from actually walking off to get said car keys.

"You don't have to," Ben said, shoulder's hunched. "I figured I'd just walk back."

Folding his arms across his chest, Kevin fixed Ben with a raised eyebrow as he said rather bluntly, "Really now? Because that sounds like a stupid idea to me."

"What do you mean by that?" Ben asked, brow furrowing, his tone confused.

"There's a murderer out there, Ben," Kevin said as if it were obvious, and, well, it _should be _obvious. "And as far as we know, you've quite possibly poked around in his business _twice._"

"You were there for that second time too, _which, _by the way, we don't even know if it was the same guy so you can hardly count it as twice," Ben said. "And anyway, I'll be fine. It's not like this is the first time I've gone for a walk on my own since finding that body."

Kevin had said it once and he'll say it again: logical thinker, yet at times a complete moron.

"That was pretty stupid of you then, wasn't it," Kevin said disapprovingly.

Why didn't Ben get it? It was dangerous out there, what with a killer on the loose and the fact that Ben didn't have his omnitrix working for him to rely on. Kevin didn't know what he'd do if something else happened to Ben, especially after the last bad thing, Ben's short-term death experience. Couldn't Ben see that Kevin was concerned for him, that he wasn't just trying to be an annoying nag?

A cool green gaze and an indifferent expression was the only response Kevin got, so... apparently not.

"There are safety in numbers, Ben," Kevin finally said, holding back a sigh. "You shouldn't be walking around out there on your own. Not right now."

"But none of those 'numbers' even want to be around me right now," Ben stated plainly, as if it were a simple fact and not at all something to feel hurt by.

As harsh as that sounded, it was pretty much true. Ben was the new pariah of Bellwood – of a lot of places, really – and people preferred to keep their distance from him in a way that seemed overly exaggerated at times.

It was pretty freakin' ridiculous if you asked Kevin, and it was the main reason why he had taken to driving Ben to and from school when Ben's parents weren't able to. You couldn't keep your distance from each other on a bus, and the closed-quarters of a bus plus a bunch of jumpy teens was just a recipe for disaster, something that was easily avoided by Kevin simply driving Ben around.

"Screw the general public, they're all morons anyway," Kevin said. "I'm not talking about them, I'm talking about me and your family. We've got your back."

'_We care about you. I care about you,' _he thought, but couldn't bring himself to say it out-loud. It just sounded too... _girly,_ and Kevin Levin was _not_ girly.

"We're just looking out for you," Kevin said instead.

"Yeah, I get that," Ben said in a cheerful tone that sounded purposely fake, as if this was Ben's way of reminding Kevin that _all_ of his emotions were, in fact, fake. Hearing that tone of voice made Kevin feel as if their entire conversation had been a waste of breath.

"I'm still driving you home," Kevin said stubbornly, deciding to put an end to their conversation on the matter with that one simple statement. He turned and headed into the kitchen, grabbing his car keys off the kitchen table.

"Kevin, wait," Ben said, following right behind him. The other boy tugged at his sleeve, saying, "I wasn't even going to go home, alright."

Kevin paused in the kitchen, turning to face the brunette.

"At least, not right away," Ben said, suddenly not sounding as insistent as he had before about his plan to 'walk home.'

"Where were you going to go?" Kevin asked suspiciously and Ben gave him a full-armed shrug.

"I dunno," Ben admitted.

"Not back to the pond?" Kevin asked, eyes narrowing.

"No, I'm not stupid."

Kevin held his tongue.

"I just wanted to walk around or something," Ben said. "Go somewhere other than home, just for a little while."

Maybe Ben wanted to get away from the insanity of it all. Though he wouldn't exactly be getting away from any of that out among the general public, but Kevin was sure he could keep away any annoyances.

"Fine, we'll go out somewhere before I take you home," Kevin said in a casual tone that insisted that it really was no big deal to him, and he was quick to add before Ben could even open his mouth, "And don't even bother arguing about me coming along because I'm not letting you go wandering off on your own."

The question now was where should they actually go.

'_Mr. Smoothie's always an option,_' Kevin mused.

And then his eyes rested on Ben's t-shirt, taking in the fact that the other boy was still jacket-less, when Kevin got an idea.

.

* * *

.

Ben slouched down in the passenger's seat, his head resting against the car door. He pretended to stare out the window, but in reality was watching Kevin's faint reflection in the glass_. _

"I don't need a new jacket," Ben voiced his protests for what was probably the third time since they left Kevin's house. "I have a jacket."

"Wearing your dad's old jacket doesn't count," Kevin insisted.

"It's still a jacket," Ben said, being sure to sound indignant.

He didn't understand Kevin's reasoning. A jacket was a jacket no matter what it looked like or who it had once belonged to, and buying a new one would just be a waste of money. "It keeps me warm... I think." he glanced over at the other boy. "What more does it need to do aside from that?"

"If it's so important to you, then why didn't you wear it today when it was supposed to be between twenty and thirty outside?" Kevin asked, being the clever bastard that he is.

"It's not like I even feel the cold," Ben said, though it was a weak excuse at best, and as expected, Kevin tore it down a second later.

"You can still get sick, you know, even if you can't feel the cold," Kevin said, and it was clear from the slightly smug look on his face that he knew that he had won the argument.

Ben was sure to give the appropriate 'pouting loser's' response though by sighing and suddenly reclining his seat back so that he was lying down and looking up at the car's metal ceiling rather than looking at Kevin. This put him out of the line-of-sight of any people that might look at Kevin's car as it drove by and it also almost put him outside of Kevin's peripheral vision.

It was win-win if you asked him.

"I don't even see what the big deal is," Kevin said, apparently ignoring the fact that Ben was quite obviously giving him the cold shoulder. "You said before that you would get a new one."

Ben had to admit that Kevin had a point, both about the jacket and about the cold and 'getting sick' thing.

'_He's really been on fire today about this whole 'being right' thing,' _Ben noted.

He'd probably be annoyed by this if it were still possible for him.

And really, why _hadn't_ he gotten a new jacket yet? It wasn't like he wouldn't be able to find one just like his old one that he had bloodied up. Ever since his secret life went public, the style of his jacket had been mass-produced for anyone who wanted to look like him, which he had always kind of found disturbing in the past, although of course not right now.

He supposed he just hadn't cared if he got a new one or not. Sentimentality was kind of beyond him at the moment.

"I guess it just slipped my mind as unimportant," Ben said in response to Kevin's comment.

It wasn't that he was forgetful, he just didn't see the point in wasting time thinking about things that didn't matter, and getting a new jacket didn't matter. There was no reasoning with Kevin on the subject though, just like there was no reasoning with any of them, Kevin or his family, about the futility in faking his emotions around them.

They soon arrived at Bellwood's small, one and only mall. Walking through the shopping center, on their way to the only store that regularly sold his style of jacket, Ben couldn't help but compare the atmosphere of the mall to what his school was like. All around him was fear and apprehension, and while some looked away, most stared at him like he was an interesting car-wreck waiting to happen. He kept his gaze forward, pretending to ignore it as they walked, while Kevin chose a more direct approach and glared at everyone, the other boy's colors flaring red at anyone who stared for too long.

When they reached the small clothing store, it was no huge surprise that the 'Ben 10' style jackets were on sale for half-off. When they spotted the half-off signs, Kevin threw him a quick glance for some reason, like he should be bothered by it, but Ben understood the store's reasoning. No one wanted to dress up like a potential killer. Personally, Ben thought that the situation seemed like it should be more funny than anything else, like the store chain that sold his style of jacket was a small child stamping its feet and saying that Ben wasn't allowed to play in its clubhouse anymore.

"Less money that you have to spend," Ben pointed out reasonably.

"Excuse me, _I'm _paying for this?" Kevin asked, though with an amused smile on his face.

"You're the one who insisted I get a new one," Ben said. "I was perfectly fine with walking around in my t-shirt."

"Yeah, like a moron in the middle of _winter,_" Kevin said, exasperated.

"Don't be ridiculous," Ben said, approaching the sales rack. "It's still fall. Winter isn't for another couple of weeks."

"Totally missing the point there."

Sifting through the jackets on the sales rack, Ben noticed that there weren't a lot of jackets in his style left, and he wondered if it was because people took advantage of the sale like he was, or if they had been bought up before and the store just hadn't bothered to order in a new shipment.

The two bands going around the upper right sleeve, the single stripe running up the left front of the jacket, the number ten patch, it was all the same on all of them, but there were different colors choices. Red like Albedo's jacket, blue, orange, pink, yellow, black, grey, and then –

"Here we go," Kevin said, pulling a classic bright green jacket off of the rack. "Looks to be about your size. Here, try it on."

Kevin tossed him the jacket and Ben slipped it on. He stretched out his arms, checking the length of the sleeves. It seemed to fit him fine. Not too big or too small. Ben walked over to one of the nearby mirrors for a better look because maybe he just wasn't feeling that it wasn't fitting him right.

He stepped in front of the mirror. The jacket of course fit him perfectly, just like his old one, and now the image was complete. There stood Ben Tennyson, exactly as he had been before his death– like spackling up a hole in a wall and painting over it, as if nothing had ever happened. He smiled a small smile because he knew that looked more like Ben Tennyson than the neutral expression he had on before.

He didn't need to be a genius to know that it didn't look quite right though.

The mask may be in place – the person who he was supposed to be, who everyone wanted him to be, or expected him to be – but he couldn't possibly do his past self justice. It was like he had been given the reins to someone else's life, some stranger, and was expected to make all of the right choices, and he had been doing a pretty crummy job of things so far, as everyone seemed to keep pointing out, even if indirectly or unintentionally. He felt like there should be a caption floating across his reflection saying '_Ben Tennyson: Ur doing in wrong.'_

_'If I ever get my emotions back, I'm probably going to be pretty pissed at myself by the end of this all.'_

"Hey, it's perfect," Kevin said, coming up behind him and slapping a hand on his shoulder, apparently not seeing what Ben was seeing.

"I don't really know if green's my color anymore," Ben said with a doubtful tone.

"You look fine," Kevin said, insistent, and guided Ben away from the mirror. "Let's go check-out."

His gaze still on the mirror, Ben briefly shifted his smile into a frown before the neutral expression was back again. Looking away, he let Kevin lead him over to the cash register, slipping off the jacket so that the cashier could ring it up.

She stared at him with a kind of wide-eyed expression, the cashier who looked to be in her mid-twenties, and there was that usual tinge of fear, but not as much as most. If anything, she simply looked very interested, like she was watching the climax of a movie, and Ben had to giver her some credit for being able to stare at him unblinkingly and without turning away while _also_ being able to ring-up his purchase.

Ben chose to ignore the staring, but Kevin, it seemed, could not.

"You got a problem, lady?" Kevin questioned with his usual tough-guy bravado.

The woman flushed and had the decency to look shamefaced as she said, "Uh, no, so sorry about that, sir." then she paused, seeming to be having an internal debate with herself before she looked over at Ben and blurted out, "Is it true that you threatened someone with a knife?"

Ben blinked, honestly not expecting that out of all the things that she could have said. Even Kevin looked taken aback, his tough-guy posturing dropped in exchange for pure bewilderment.

When the question finally registered with Ben's mind, he was quick to laugh it off and assure the woman with what he hoped was a smile on his face, "No, of course not. Where did you hear that?"

As the woman explained about the anonymous source that had come forward to the newspaper – she even had the article on hand, a crinkled and folded up piece of newspaper that she passed over to him and Kevin – Ben actually had to think back, and think carefully before-

'_Oh... Ohhh.'_

That shaman, spiritual expert guy. The one that had actually caused him to feel something, even if it was a brief moment of pain.

'_I was just washing a knife.'_

But apparently that's not what it looked like, not while he had been attempting to threaten the guy. All empty threats of course, but it seemed the guy had taken it to heart.

'_Bet this wouldn't have been a problem if I had been washing a spoon.'_

Ben didn't know if the woman believed him or not, but it didn't matter to him if she did, so for the most part he stayed silent, smiling (hopefully) while she sputtered out an apology and made some kind of comment about how she figured that it wasn't true. Kevin paid for his new (and yet old because it was the same) jacket and they left the mall soon after, both not really being one to wander around to the different stores, especially now that they had a continuous negative audience.

Aside from briefly saying that '_That was weird, huh?' _Kevin didn't bring up the subject of the woman's accusation during the drive home, and as they pulled into the driveway to Ben's house, the brunette thought that maybe that would be the end of it.

Except apparently it wasn't because before Ben could get out of the car, Kevin was pulling the incriminating newspaper article out of his pocket – Ben hadn't even realized that Kevin had kept it – and he smoothed it out against the steering wheel with a curious look on his face.

"It just seems odd to me," Kevin said, tapping a finger against the article. "I mean, yeah, you've had bad press before, but usually there's some cause behind it. Something that someone's taking out of context. There's never been any straight-out lies like this. At least not in something that's supposed to be a reputable source."

"Guess I'm just unlucky, or whatever," Ben said, gaze dropping down to where his arm rested against the car door when Kevin looked over at him. He drummed his fingers against the car door for a moment before grabbing the handle and letting himself out. Pulling his backpack out of the back seat, he gave Kevin a brief, awkward wave as he said, "Well, I'll see you later, Kevin."

His dismissal was too abrupt though, too out-of-the-ordinary, because Kevin was getting out of the car too, saying, "Wait, what was that?"

Ben turned in place, giving the other boy a completely blank look as he walked backwards toward his front door, "What was what? I'm not doing anything."

Kevin's eyes narrowed at him as he closed the driver's side door. "Look, I may not be able to tell if you're lying from the eye twitch thing anymore, but I can tell when you're not saying something."

His colors were of doubt, of distrust, yet with a little bit of concern mixed in.

"It's not important, okay?" Ben said, turning away from Kevin and unlocking the front door of his house. His parents weren't home, but that wasn't unusual for them. There was a number of places they could be, but they were most likely out speaking with the lawyer. "Just, you know, like you said, stuff out of context."

Kevin blinked in surprise, and when Ben walked into his house, dropping his backpack near the front door, Kevin was quick to follow him inside.

"'Context?' So you mean..." Kevin trailed off, standing in the doorway for a moment before quickly closing the door shut behind him as he said, "Shit, Ben, you didn't seriously threaten some guy with a knife, did you?"

"_Out of context!_" Ben emphasized with as much exasperation as he could muster, throwing his arms in the air to further get his point across. "Meaning, not... _exactly. _Not on purpose... Except _kind of_ on purpose."

He flopped over onto his couch, legs hanging over the armrest, and stretched an arm out to the coffee table to snatch up the remote. He hesitated for a second on turning the TV on, because they could be talking about the knife thing, which would only add more fuel to whatever fire Kevin seemed to have going, but he wanted to stay informed on what they were all saying about him, and he especially wanted to stay informed on the crime he was being accused of. For all he knew, there could be breaking new information on the whole thing.

He switched the TV on, quickly flipping through the channels until he reached a news station.

Kevin glared at the TV screen, all angry colors and looking like he wanted to start the argument up again about '_brooding' _and '_not watching that crap,'_ or whatever nonsense it was that he had been spouting about to Ben before, but the other boy seemed determined not to get distracted from the conversation on hand, and instead asked, "Not on purpose, but _actually _on purpose?" Reaching down and grabbing Ben's wrists, Kevin pulled him up to his feet – as close to being eye-to-eye as they could get considering that he was shorter than Kevin – and continued, "What exactly did you _do, _Tennyson?"

"It was that stupid spirit-expert guy. The one who made me actually feel something," Ben finally said. "I didn't threaten him with a knife, I was _washing _a knife."

The angry colors faded just a bit, but the doubt was still there.

"That all sounds completely innocent," Kevin said before asking with a raised eyebrow, "What was the 'on purpose' part?"

Ben watched Kevin closely, trying to judge what the other boy's reaction might be and wondering if he should say anything at all, or if it would benefit him more to keep his mouth shut. Green eyes dropped down to the older boy's hands which were still wrapped around his wrists.

'_He's not my parents, he can't ground me,' _he thought to himself.

Noting, on top of that, that it would at least be helpful to _sound_ like he cared, like he was sorry for what he had done, when his gaze darted back up to look Kevin in the eye, Ben said as sheepishly and as innocently as he could, "There _may_ have been some threatening involved... while I just-so-happened to be cleaning a knife."

Kevin dropped his wrists, stepping back with a look on his face that was half exasperated and half 'you've-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me.' The older boy slapped a hand to his forehead with a long-suffering sigh, shaking his head as he muttered something to himself.

"To be fair, this happened _before_ the whole murder suspect thing," Ben felt the need to point out, because it wasn't like he could have predicted that the whole thing could have come back in such a way that only supported people's suspicions about him.

"That doesn't matter, Ben," Kevin said, arms thrown out to his sides before he turned away from Ben and started pacing, "You shouldn't threaten people, especially not normal civilians. I shouldn't even have to tell you this, it should be common sense."

Ben tracked the pacing with his eyes, noting how tense Kevin looked, the way his colors lashed about him as his body language and the subtle expressions on his face seemed to give off the sense that there was an entire conversation going on that Ben couldn't really follow or understand, like there were more words being spoken than what Kevin was actually saying to him. Ben took a couple of unsure steps towards the other teen, moving around the couch until it was to his back.

"You're making this into a bigger deal than it really is," Ben said, putting a hint of frustration into his tone as a way of saying that maybe they should just drop it because the damage had already been done and anything they say now isn't going to change that.

Ben remembered a time when Kevin would have laughed about something like this, and he wondered why things were different now. There was concern in Kevin's colors, doubts and disbelief, and the anger was back again, but why, for what purpose? It wasn't like they'd never been in crummy situations before, it wasn't like Ben had never made a mistake or screwed something up. It didn't make sense. What made now so different than before?

Whatever Kevin had been about to say in response to Ben's claims of him overreacting was cut off when the news reporters on the television went from discussing the weather forecast for the week to talking about Ben and the murder case and the newest development of Ben supposedly threatening someone with a knife. The news reporters thankfully weren't instantly demonizing him and were instead discussing the validity of the accusation – specifically why someone with a weapon on their wrist would need a knife – but the fact that they were even talking about the knife thing at all didn't exactly help defuse things between him and Kevin.

"See?" Kevin said, stopping in his pacing, "It doesn't matter about the knife or the fact that this happened before the murder case, it's the fact that you even threatened someone at all. You've _known _for a while now that you're on the media's radar, that a lot of people have been wary of you in the past. Well, people aren't just wary now, they're scared, and it's not just a couple people that are scared of you, it's a lot."

"_Assuming that this is true," _one news reporter said, _"It's really not that big of a surprise, is it? A teenager with that much power; of course it's going to go to his head and he's going to try throwing his weight around."_

"I'm just saying," Kevin continued. "You're not helping yourself any by threatening people, even if the guy was a douche bag and deserved it."

"_Surprisingly, there's been no reports coming in of Tennyson threatening classmates," _another reporter said. _"Which is what one would usually expect from someone around his age, to feel more inclined to try and gain an edge over others his own age. One question that had been asked among our viewers is if Tennyson's school system should even wait for a threat to happen against other students or if some form of action should be taken now."_

"I mean, just listen to that," Kevin said, gesturing at the television screen. "Taking action? Like what, kicking you out of school?"

"They're not going to kick me out," Ben said. "I haven't done anything. Not anything at school, at least."

"'Haven't done anything' should apply to everywhere, not just at your school," Kevin said, then sighed. "Look, I'm not blaming you for anything. Hell knows I've threatened lots of people before. You just... need to be more careful, okay? Now more than ever, when everyone's waiting for you to mess up. Just try and watch what you say, and be more careful about how you act around people, alright?"

There it was again. _Watch what you say, be more careful. _Because he wasn't acting right. Because he needed to be more normal, he needed to act more sincere.

"So if some other half-wit comes over to my house again," Ben began slowly, "and messes around with some magic thing that he has no idea how to do properly, I just need to be nice and... _smile _through it."

Kevin gave him a kind of peculiar look, and said, "Life's full of doing shit we don't want to do, but... if it's really something that's bothering you, you can always come hide out at my place."

"I'm not bothered," Ben immediately insisted, because he wasn't. He _couldn't _be. He didn't feel anything now, emotional or otherwise, and he didn't feel anything back when he threatened that guy. He was a completely blank slate just like always, and the things he did wasn't due to any emotional reason, it was all due to completely _unemotional, _logically thought-out reasons, or sometimes simply because it was something the old Ben would have done (which, when you thought about it, was a logical reason for him to do something).

"You seem bothered," Kevin said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Have you talked to your parents about all of these voodoo experts?"

"No, because there's nothing to talk about because I'm not bothered," he said, and now he was the one pacing, but not because he was bothered or because of any emotional reason, he was just... pacing. Did there really need to be a reason behind everything? "My parents are weird, and they do weird things like hire a shaman to do some sort of spiritual cleansing thing. It's just part of the norm around here, and I'm _not_ bothered because it's impossible for me to be bothered by anything."

"Are you completely sure about that?" Kevin asked, unconvinced. "'Cause–"

"No," Ben cut him off. "I'm... myself. I'm completely blank as usual. It's just a matter of tolerating the shamans and the voodoo experts, and I just need to make sure I smile, and act normal and sincere."

And pretend like he cared about things when he really didn't, and be more courteous, and nicer, and above all, more emotional, but not too emotional, not _over-_emotional, just the right amount of emotions that didn't disturb people, because people were disturbed enough as it was, and he needed to stop making it worse.

Just be a better person. That's all, right?

Not to imply that he was currently anything less of a person.

Even though it certainly seemed like it.

And so many other people were acting like that was the case too.

"_More on the Bellwood murder case tonight at eleven, and Ben Tennyson's potential involvement," _the television blared.

What happened next occurred too quickly for Ben to really understand. There was a feeling, not a physical feeling, but a tiny spark of something inside that, if he were to give it more thought, was very reminiscent of the time not too long ago when his grandfather grounded him from Plumber duties.

Just like the time before, the small spark of something wasn't there for very long. It fizzled out almost instantly, but for the brief moment that it was there, it burned hot inside of him – not a physical burning feeling, mind you – and he suddenly found himself grabbing a lamp off the nearby end table and hurling it across the room at the television. Its cord ripped free from the outlet as the lamp collided with the television, its metal base shattering the screen and nearly knocking the bulky electronic device off its stand.

A sort of stunned silence descended over the room as Ben stared at the now broken TV and Kevin stared at him. Thinking to himself that he could probably safely count himself as grounded at this point, Ben walked around the couch to the TV and prodded at the broken glass with a sneakered foot.

"I didn't know I could throw that hard," Ben finally said, breaking the silence rather bluntly, and brought a hand up to press against his mouth – an unconscious gesture that he didn't really understand but went along with anyway.

Being all too aware that Kevin was still staring at him, Ben's gaze snapped over to the older boy. His hand dropped back down to his side, and – his voice rising without him even meaning it to – he asked, "_What?_"

Kevin held up his hands in a pacifying way and said quite calmly, considering the oddity of the situation, "Nothing. Clearly you have something you need to get off your chest, so go ahead. Talk."

"There's not really anything to talk about," Ben said, looking between Kevin and the broken television, "I don't even know why I did that."

"Well, it's one way of turning off a TV," Kevin remarked humorously, stepping forward to lean against the back of the couch. He briefly looked down at the broken glass before looking back up at Ben and saying, "And if I were to guess further, because this really isn't as complicated as you seem to think it is, I'd say that you're stressed."

"But I'm not," Ben said, "Being stressed is... anxiety and fear and all sorts of other emotions that I don't have."

Even taking into account that tiny spark of something – it had happened so quickly, was there and gone in a second – not nearly enough time to be stressed out by anything.

Kevin watched Ben carefully as if he could somehow detect some form of hidden emotions that weren't, in reality, there, and said, "Yeah, alright. Putting your condition aside for a moment though, what would be bothering you right now if you _did_ have your emotions? The murder investigation? All these magic experts your parents keep sicking on you? I'm sure you have some idea of what's going on about what could be making you stressed, even if you don't feel stressed right now."

"There's the obvious, everything you mentioned," Ben said, his gaze drifting down to the broken glass at his feet, "And the way they keep talking about me on TV, and the way everyone keeps looking at me like I'm about to attack them. I guess it's possible that the old me, the way I was before, could be bothered by those things."

"Of course," Kevin said. "Who _wouldn't_ be bothered by those things?"

"And then there's also..." Ben trailed off, shuffling in place.

"What?" Kevin asked curiously.

"It... doesn't really matter," Ben said as he turned away from Kevin and reached around the TV to unplug it from the wall. "Since... I'm not actually upset or bothered or stressed by anything."

Tossing the power cord to the ground, he walked back around the TV and knelt down next to the broken glass. As he reached out to start picking up the larger pieces – quite carefully, he might add – Kevin was quick to hop over the couch and wave his hands away, saying, "Jeez, stop, you're going to cut yourself."

Huffing out a breath, Ben smacked Kevin's hands away and said, "No, you stop. I... It's this. It's all of the stuff like _this._" Seeing the confused look Kevin was giving him, Ben was quick to elaborate, "Out of everything that's going on right now, if I really was stressed by anything – which I'm not, because it's impossible–"

"You're rambling."

"It's you guys," Ben finally said. "You, Gwen, my parents, Grandpa Max. If I was the old me right now, I'd say that you're driving me crazy. I'm perfectly capable of picking up glass on my own, and even without the omnitrix, I'm a good fighter and I can help out with alien problems, and most important of all, I don't need a constant critique from you guys on how to act more emotional and more human. If I want your advice, I'll ask for it, and... and, I keep telling you, I shouldn't even have to pretend to be normal around you guys at all. Seriously, you're gonna give me some kind of complex by the end of all this crap."

This was all said quite tonelessly, because the point of even telling Kevin this was that he _shouldn't _have to fake all the emotions someone would normally have when giving a rant, and it would seem that his monotonous words alone were enough to get his point across because Kevin looked taken-aback as if he _had_ actually shouted all of this.

Kevin rose to his feet, looking away with one hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck as he muttered, "Shit."

Standing up as well, when Kevin paused, saying no more than that, Ben felt the need to go on and explain, "I get that I have to keep the act up around the rest of the world, because they don't know and they'll likely freak out even more, but around all of you–"

"No, you're right."

Kevin had never been all that great at apologies, and rarely apologized for much in the past, but when he sighed and looked back over at Ben, the younger boy could see the wordless apology there, and it was honestly more than Ben had been expecting from the Osmosian at all, along with Kevin saying that he was right.

"You shouldn't have to fake all of that around me and your family," Kevin continued. "I mean, we're like 'home base,' right? It should be a safe zone where you don't have to worry about jumping through hoops and pretending."

Holding back the need to say that he wasn't worried, Ben instead said, "Look, it's fine. You weren't even that bad about the whole thing."

Which was the truth, when he thought back on it. Sure, Kevin had seemed a little uncomfortable at first with Ben's emotionless state, but now more often than not, the other boy just seemed to go along with the flow of things. He wasn't really all that bad about correcting him on adjusting his mood or acting less like an emotionless brick wall.

"It's really more my family that's the problem," Ben said, more to himself than anything, but Kevin heard him anyway.

"I can talk to Gwen about it, no problem," Kevin said. "Your grandpa too, if you want me to, and _you _should really talk to your parents about this."

It _was_ the short of discussion that should be between him and his parents, and even though Kevin offered, Ben figured that he should also be the one to talk to Grandpa Max as well.

But then he thought about what Grandpa Max had said to him before, about how his parents were worried about him, and about how pretending to have emotions around them would ease their stress, that it's even something that the old him would have wanted him to do.

"It would be... preferable to not have to fake around them, but my parents... Is it really worth adding the extra stress to their lives just to ease my own stress which probably doesn't even exist?" Ben asked – for some reason his arms came up to wrap around himself like a hug. "It's all just hypothetical anyway, the whole 'me being stressed' thing. You keep saying I'm stressed out when I'm not really, and when you think about it, it makes more sense to make sure their lives are less stressful than my own."

Hands crossing over his chest, clearly not looking at all swayed by what Ben said, Kevin asked, "Have you ever considered that maybe there _is_ some part of you that's bothered by all of this, and maybe it's just buried somewhere so far down that you can't tell it's there?"

"It could be a possibility," Ben said slowly, because it wasn't like they knew all that much about his 'condition,' or what had even happened to his emotions. He was reminded of that little spark of something, of the two times it had sprung up and then disappeared in an instant, and he had to wonder if that had come from somewhere deep down like Kevin was suggesting or if it had just appeared from nowhere.

"There was this... _something, _that I kinda felt when I threw the lamp," Ben said after a moment's hesitation. "It was small, and very brief."

"Something? Like...?"

"An emotion, maybe?" Ben supplied, honestly not too sure himself. "It was kind of too quick to tell, but... maybe anger, or frustration?"

"Do you think they might be coming back? Your emotions?" Kevin asked with a quiet, cautious optimism.

"I don't know," Ben said, shaking his head. "I don't think it's something we should count on happening."

"Right," Kevin said, a bit dourly. Getting back to the discussion at hand, he said, "Look Ben, all I'm saying is, you threw that lamp for a reason, right? Don't you think your parents would want to know if they're doing something that's bothering you so much, whether it's hypothetical or not?"

His parents always _have_ wanted the best for him in the past. This probably was something they'd want to know now.

Any further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by the sound of his front door opening as his mom and dad walked through, finally getting home for the night. It was only seconds before they both caught sight of the smashed television. As looks of shock and surprise passed over their faces, his mother's face especially, and Ben's automatic response was to blurt out a rather sincere, "I broke the TV, I'm so sorry."

Out of the corner of his eye, Ben could see Kevin watching him, a frown on the older boy's face, and it was apparent from the look Kevin was giving him that now would actually be a good time to talk to his parents about everything. That is, if he so chose to tell them at all... which he probably should, because they really _would_ want to know.

"Except," Ben said, speaking before his parents could really respond to his apology. "I'm actually not sorry. At all. And..."

What did people usually say in situations like this?

"I need to talk to you guys about some stuff," Ben said. "Maybe we should sit down?"

Kevin clapped a hand on his shoulder, giving him an encouraging smile as he said, "Guess I'll leave you to it. Unless you need me for moral support?"

Ben waved away his offer, saying, "Nah. I'll be fine. See you later, Kevin."

Giving Ben a quick departing wave, and a courteous smile and nod to Ben's parents as he stepped around them on the way out, Kevin soon left, his car rumbling to life before fading away in the distance.

"Ben?" His mother said, looking curious, confused, and concerned all at the same time. "What's going on?"

The moment of truth.

They went into the kitchen to sit down, away from the mess in the living room that Ben planned to clean up afterwards. Hands tapping absentmindedly on the table top, he finally told them what he told Kevin, except more straightforward and not quite as blunt. They knew before that 'the spell' had messed with him, that he had lost his sense of touch and that he was severely lacking in the emotions department, but they didn't know just how emotionally dead inside he was, and while he wanted them to know that he didn't want to have to fake emotions around them, he _didn't_ want them to know just how much he actually didn't care about them, or anything else for that matter.

"Ben, honey, don't ever feel like you have to pretend to be someone else around us," his mother said, resting one hand over his own. "And don't feel like you have to fake what you're feeling around us either."

What he was feeling, or lack thereof.

"I just didn't want to worry you guys," he said, but for once with his naturally dull tone.

"Now don't you forget, we're the parents here," his father said. "We take care of you, not the other way around."

Both his mother's and his father's colors were mostly of concern, but there were a couple other colors as well. They were all lighter colors; light red, light pink, a hint of lavender with just pure white light.

"We understand that you're feeling out-of-sorts and not quite yourself from this whole... magical mishap," his mother said. "But that'll get all worked out eventually. In the meantime, you don't have to worry about putting on a show for us."

Except there was always the chance that he was stuck this way forever, that things would never get worked out, but he didn't say any of this out loud. He did wonder though if they'd be singing the same tune years from now, when nothing had changed.

"Don't think you're off the hook about breaking the TV though," his dad said without missing a beat.

"That's fair," Ben said, having expected something of the sort about the TV to be said. "What's my punishment?"

.

* * *

.

No television for the next two weeks would have been a funny punishment (he was guessing) – considering the fact that the television was currently broken and he wouldn't have been able to watch it anyway – but then they added a 'no internet, no newspapers/tabloids/magazines of any sort' punishment on top of that, unless he needed it for school.

"_Don't think we haven't noticed you obsessing over watching what they're saying about you on the news," _his mother had said with her 'serious face.' _"If something important comes up about the case that we think you need to know, then we'll tell you."_

Otherwise, he was completely cut off from the media circus going on around him. Considering that both his parents' and Kevin's lecture on watching the news too much were fairly similar, and had even occurred on the same day, Ben almost wondered if the three had conspired against him. That wasn't really Kevin's style though, so he doubted it.

Despite the talk he'd had with his parents, the following morning when Ben had acted in what was a normal manner for himself, both expressionless and monotonous, he'd been half expecting some sort of negative reaction. After all, it wasn't unusual for people to say one thing and feel something else entirely, and not be able to control their reactions to their true feelings. He wouldn't have held it against his parents either, since the same could be said for him – the way he faked some kind of emotion around the people around him, and sometimes had trouble masking his complete lack of care.

That wasn't the case though, and his parents had gone about their morning as if there was nothing out of the ordinary. Ben kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but the days went by and nothing happened. Sure, his mother would sometimes hug him a little bit longer than usual, and his dad would occasionally get this pinched look around his eyes, but that was pretty much it. Just subtle stuff – things that Ben couldn't really put a meaning to.

The world around him fell into a sort of routine. The murder case continued on in the background with no real developments (he was guessing, because neither his parents nor Kevin and Gwen told him of any recent developments. Plus, the staring from his classmates and the general public didn't lessen any). His parents were usually busy with either work or paperwork or talking with the lawyer, and Ben had to wonder if they were even getting anywhere, if it was even worth the battle, because it was hard to fight the system and actually win (but they wouldn't be his parents if they gave up in a fight against 'the man.').

Then there was Kevin, who continued to drive him to and from school when he could, which was most of the time. Ben shelled out gas money to him every now and then because it only seemed fair, and if Gwen wasn't too busy with one of the many projects, or extracurricular activities that she had going on (or researching about Ben's problem, because she was relentless), they'd go meet up with her and hang out.

"We won't be here when you get home today," his mother said as he was heading out the door to school that morning. "Your dad has work and I'm meeting up with the lawyer. I'll be bringing dinner back with me though, so don't snack too much when you get back."

"Alright," he said, grabbing his jacket. The honking of Kevin's car horn was nearly drowned out by the sound of raindrops beating against the living room window.

"Don't forget an umbrella!" his mother called out to him at the last minute.

"Right!" he called back, making a detour to the hall closet to grab one. It had honestly slipped his mind since rain wasn't really something that could bother him anymore.

"Bye," he said as he left, popping the umbrella open for the run between his front door and Kevin's car. He didn't really wait for a response. He was already running late as it was.

_'Just another day.'_

_.  
_

* * *

.

The best time to visit Mr. Smoothie was before the various Bellwood schools let out for the day, as Kevin had come to find. Since most of Mr. Smoothie's regulars were students, Kevin could avoid the usual crowds and having to wait in line by stopping at the smoothie joint _before _picking Ben up rather than after, although on a day like today, he doubted there'd be any real crowds even after school ended. Since the drive-through was currently out-of-order, not a lot of people would be willing to go out into the rain just to get a smoothie, even if it was only for a brief walk from their car to the front entrance.

'_The things I do for the people I care about,' _Kevin thought to himself.

Arms crossed over his chest, he leaned against the counter near the cash register, waiting for his drink order and glaring at the downpour currently going on outside. Between the heavy rain and the dark clouds passing by overhead, visibility outside was at an all-time low. If Ben wasn't about to get out of school, Kevin would have been perfectly content with waiting a bit to see if the rain would let up at all.

"Order thirty-seven," one of the Mr. Smoothie employees called out.

Kevin grabbed the cardboard carrier containing three drinks; two normal flavored ones for him and Gwen, who they were meeting up with afterwards, and one oddly-flavored one for Ben. How the other boy could continue to drink that stuff was still beyond Kevin.

Flipping the hood of his jacket up, and wishing he had an umbrella, Kevin stepped outside into the rain and made a run for his car. Passing by one of the outdoor tables that had an umbrella built into it, he caught sight of a teen sitting on the table and smoking a cigarette – someone skipping class, he guessed, or a drop-out like himself.

"Hey, Levin!" the teen called out to him as Kevin raced by.

The other boy wasn't anyone that Kevin knew, but a lot of people in Bellwood knew who he was without him actually knowing them, so it wasn't really a surprise. Kevin ignored the teen and continued on to his car, because he already had a good idea as to what the other boy wanted to talk to him about – something involving Ben. It had been happening quite frequently ever since Ben's involvement with the murder case was announced. People would come up to him to ask various questions about the omnitrix hero, thinking that maybe they could get an insider's look into the whole thing by talking to Kevin. As annoying as it was and as angry as it made Kevin, he had found that the best course of action to take was to just ignore the people and throw in a heated glare if they didn't take the hint (the effect of glaring was kind of ruined by all the rain at the moment though, so he just settled for ignoring the teen).

"Levin! Hold on for a sec!"

Kevin finally reached his car, and whatever else the teen had shouted over to him was cut off when he climbed inside his car and slammed the door shut. Rain drummed loudly against the car's metal body as he set the carton carrying the smoothies on the floor of the passenger's seat. Grumbling to himself about ungrateful morons, Kevin fished his keys out of his coat pocket and slid his car key into the ignition.

As he turned the keys in the ignition, he heard a noise – an odd _click-click _noise that didn't belong, yet it was a little familiar, recognizable as something.

His eyes widened.

And a split second later, his world was consumed by fire as his car blew up.

.

* * *

.

Ben flipped his cellphone closed as his third attempt at calling Kevin resulted in the call going straight to voicemail, and while his call to Gwen actually rang a few times, she hadn't picked up either.

He checked the time again on the phone's smaller second screen, absentmindedly thinking that maybe he should get a watch that actually tells time. Forty-seven minutes had passed since his school had let out, and from his spot standing under the overhang at the school's main front entrance, there was no sign of his friend's familiar green car. All of the buses had long since left along with any straggling students, and because all outdoor extracurricular activities had been canceled due to the rain, all of the sporting fields were completely empty.

Ben squinted out through the rain at the few cars that still remained in the parking lot, searching for a splotch of green that wasn't there. He wondered if Kevin had maybe been called away to some kind of emergency Plumber situation. Normally in that case, the other boy would have called him to let him know, but in their line of work, sometimes circumstances didn't allow that.

'_A working omnitrix would be really helpful right about now,' _he mused, his gaze switching from the parked cars to the rain itself. An umbrella was only so helpful in rain as heavy as this and with the omnitrix, he could have turned into an alien better suited for the current conditions and get himself home faster than he could walk as just his normal human self.

Gaze alternating between checking the time on his cellphone and watching for Kevin's car, he waited another fifteen minutes before calling it quits. Popping open his umbrella, he left the front entrance overhang and started walking. After all, Bellwood wasn't a huge town, so it wasn't like it'd take him a long time to walk home. In fact, if he had left as soon as he had gotten out of school instead of waiting around, he would have been home already.

He looped around to the back of the school where the second parking lot was. If he were to cut across the soccer field, he could shave a couple minutes off the time it would take him to walk home. As he headed toward the field, weaving around the cars and trucks still parked in the parking lot, he spotted something out of the corner of his eye.

Pausing, twisting around to look, he could see a figure standing in the distance, right where he had just come from. A person, a guy it looked like, with the familiar grey colors that swallowed up any other colors, other emotions, that even attempted to shine through; a brief flash of the colors of anger before they were overtaken by grey, and then a splash of the colors of fear before they too were washed away by the grey.

He expected the person to flee, like they always did, but whoever it was didn't this time. The figure shuffled in place, took a small step back, but otherwise just stood there. As Ben took a step toward him – maybe even her, it was hard to tell in the rain – he thought, _'I shouldn't.'_

It could be dangerous, like Kevin had said. Ben didn't know anything about this person, if it even was the same person. He didn't know anything about what their potential involvement might be in the murders. It would be stupid to go up to the person, to try following them when the omnitrix wasn't working, when he didn't have anything on him that he might be able to defend himself with, so he really, truly, _shouldn't._

He took another half step forward, pausing, before taking a step back.

He wasn't a police officer, he wasn't a detective, and at the moment, he wasn't even a Plumber (who didn't even have jurisdiction right now because the murders were a very _human_ crime). He was a teenager, and even though he frequently doubted the Bellwood Police Department's competency, he needed to leave this case up to them.

He took a couple more steps back.

_'I shouldn't, so... I won't.'_

Through the sound of falling rain pattering against the pavement and his umbrella, he could make out a faint noise behind him, the sound of something scuffing against wet pavement. Ben looked away from the figure in the distance, turning towards the source of the noise, and saw a second figure standing behind him. A man he didn't know – his form only slightly blurred by the rain – with one hand raised high, clutching a long thin object.

A tire iron.

Quicker than Ben could blink, the man swung the tool down.

And everything went black.

.

* * *

_Hot damn, this chapter is over 11,000 words! So much editing to do. T.T_

_So yeah, I ended on a cliffhanger. I know I'm evil, but at least you all got a nice long chapter, huh? Sadly, I now have two part-time jobs to eat up my time, along with animation stuff to work on and other stories to update, so I don't know when I'll be able to get the next chapter written. _

_Reviews never hurt the process though, so review please and let me know what you think!_


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